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A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 




A SHORT 



HISTORY 
OF WALES 



BY 
OWEN EDWARDS 

CHICAGO 

THE UNIVERSITY 

OF CHICAGO PRESS 

1907 













Printed in Great Britain. 

• • • 
» • 



[All rights reserved.] 



CONTENTS 



CHAP. TAGE 

I. WALES : WHAT IT IS MADE OF, AND WHAT 

IT IS LIKE I 

II. THE WANDERING NATIONS. THE IBERIANS 

AND CELTS 5 

III. ROME. ROMAN CONQUEST, SETTLEMENT, AND 

INFLUENCE IO 

IV. THE NAME OF CHRIST. THE OLD RELIGION 

AND THE NEW 1 5 

V. THE WELSH KINGS. WEARERS OF THE 

"CROWN OF ARTHUR" 20 

VI. THE LAWS OF HOWEL 25 

VII. THE NORMANS IN WALES .... 30 

VIII. GRIFFITH AP CONAN AND GRIFFITH AP REES 35 

IX. OWEN GWYNEDD AND THE LORD REES . . 40 

X. LLYWELYN THE GREAT 45 

XI. THE LAST LLYWELYN 5° 

vii 



CONTENTS 



CHAP. 

XII. CONQUERED WALES. HOW IT WAS GOVERNED 

XIII. THE CASTLE AND THE LONG-BOW . 

XIV. THE RISE OF THE PEASANT . 
XV. OWEN GLENDOWER AND HIS IDEALS 

XVI. THE WARS OF THE ROSES IN WALES 
XVII. THE RULE OF THE TUDORS 
XVIII. THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION 
XIX. THE CIVIL WAR IN WALES 
XX. THE GREAT REVOLUTION 
XXI. HOWEL HARRIS AND THE AWAKENING 
XXII. THE REFORM ACTS .... 

XXIII. THE FORMATION OF THE EDUCATION SYSTEM 

XXIV. THE GROWTH OF SELF-GOVERNMENT 

XXV. THE WALES OF TO-DAY 



PAGE 

55 
60 

65 
70 

75 
80 

85 

90 

96 

102 

107 

112 

117 
123 



SUMMARY 



I. THE ISOLATION OF WALES 
II. THE WALES OF THE PRINCES 
III. THE WALES OF THE PEOPLE 



129 
I30 

133 





CONTENTS 


ix 




TABLES 




CHAP 




PAGK 


I. 


THE HOUSE OF CUNEDDA 


• 135 


II. 


THE HOUSE OF GWYNEDD 


• 136 


III. 


THE HOUSE OF DYNEVOR 


• 136 


IV. 


THE HOUSE OF POWYS 


• 137 


V. 


THE HOUSE OF MORTIMER 


138 


VI. 


THE HOUSE OF TUDOR 


• 139 



INTRODUCTION 

This little book is meant for those who 
have never read any Welsh history before. 
It is not taken for granted that the reader 
knows either Latin or Welsh. 

A fuller outline may be read in The Story 
of Wales, in the ''Story of the Nations" 
series ; and a still fuller one in The Welsh 
People of Rhys and Brynmor Jones. Of 
fairly small and cheap books in various 
periods I may mention Rhys' Celtic Britain, 
Owen Rhoscomyl's Flame Bearers of Welsh 
History, Henry Owen's Gerald the Welsh- 
man, Bradley's Owen Glendower, Newell's 
Welsh Church, and Rees' Protestant Non- 
conformity in Wales. More elaborate and 
expensive books are Seebohm's Village 
Community and Tribal System in Wales, 
Clark's Mediaval Military Architecture, 
Morris' Welsh Wars of Edward L, 



xii INTRODUCTION 

Southall's Wales and Her Language. In 
writing local history, A. N. Palmer's 
History of Wrexham and companion 
volumes are models. 

If you turn to a library, you will find 
much information about Wales in Social 
England, the Dictionary of National 
Biography, the publications of the Cym- 
mrodorion and other societies. You will 
find articles of great value and interest 
over the names of F. H. Haverneld, 
J. W. Willis- Bund, Egerton Phillimore, the 
Honourable Mrs Bulkeley Owen (Given- 
rhian Gwynedd), Henry Owen, the late 
David Lewis, T. F. Tout, J. E. Lloyd, 
D. Lleufer Thomas, W. Llywelyn Williams, 
J. Arthur Price, J. H. Davies, J. Ballinger, 
Edward Owen, Hubert Hall, Hugh 
Williams, R. A. Roberts, A. W. Wade- 
Evans, E. A. Lewis. These are only 
a few out of the many who are now 
working in the rich and unexplored field 
of Welsh history. I put down the names 
only of those I had to consult in writing 
a small book like this. 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

The sources are mostly in Latin or 
Welsh. Many volumes of chronicles, 
charters, and historical poems have been 
published by the Government, by the 
Corporation of Cardiff, by J. Gwenogvryn 
Evans, by H. de Grey Birch, and others. 
But, so far, we have not had the 
interesting chronicles and poems trans- 
lated into English as they ought to be, 
and published in well edited, not too 
expensive volumes. 

Owen Edwards. 



Lincoln College, Oxford. 



LIST OF MAPS 

SECTION FROM HOLYHEAD TO CARDIFF facing p. I 
I. WALES OF THE PRINCES . . following p. 1 39 

II. RELIGION AND EDUCATION . „ „ 

III. THE SHIRES „ „ 

IV. INDUSTRIES ..... „ „ 



XV 



A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 



WALES 

Wales is a row of hills, rising between the 
Irish Sea on the west and the English plains 
on the east. If you come from the west 
along the sea, or if you cross the Severn 
or the Dee from the east, you will see that 
Wales is a country all by itself. It rises 
grandly and proudly. If you are a stranger, 
you will think of it as " Wales" — a strange 
country ; if you are Welsh, you will think of 
it as " Cymru" — a land of brothers. 

The geologist will tell you how Wales 
was made ; the geographer will tell you what 
it is like now ; the historian will tell you what 
its people have done and what they are. All 

A 



2 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

three will tell you that it is a very interesting 
country. 

The rocks of Wales are older and harder 
than the rocks of the plains ; and as you 
travel from the south to the north, the older 
and harder they become. The highest 
mountains of Wales, and some of its hills, 
have crests of the very oldest and hardest 
rock — granite, porphyry, and basalt; and 
these rocks are given their form by fire. 
But the greater part of the country is made 
of rocks formed by water — still the oldest 
of their kind. In the north-west, centre, and 
west — about two-thirds of the whole country, 
— the rocks are chiefly slate and shale ; in 
the south-east they are chiefly old red sand- 
stone ; in the north-east, but chiefly in the 
south, they are limestone and coal. 

Its rocks give Wales its famous scenery — 
its rugged peaks, its romantic glens, its rush- 
ing rivers. They are also its chief wealth — 
granite, slate, limestone, coal ; and lodes of 
still more precious metals — iron, lead, silver, 
and gold — run through them. 

The highest mountain in Wales is 
Snowdon, which is 3,570 feet above the 
level of the sea. For every 300 feet we 
go up, the temperature becomes one degree 
cooler. At about 1,000 feet it becomes too 



WALES 3 

cold for wheat; at about 1,500 it becomes 
too cold for corn ; at about 2,000 it is too 
cold for cattle ; mountain ponies graze still 
higher ; the bleak upper slopes are left to 
the small and valuable Welsh sheep. 

There are three belts of soil around the 
hills — arable, pasture, and sheep-run — one 
above the other. The arable land forms 
about a third of the country ; it lies along 
the sea border, on the slopes above the 
Dee and the Severn, and in the deep valleys 
of the rivers which pierce far inland, — the 
Severn, Wye, Usk, Towy, Teivy, Dovey, 
Conway, and Clwyd. The pasture land, the 
land of small mountain farms, forms the 
middle third ; it is a land of tiny valleys 
and small plains, ever fostered by the warm, 
moist west wind. Above it, the remaining 
third is stormy sheep-run, wide green slopes 
and wild moors, steep glens and rocky 
heights. 

From north-west to south-east the line of 
high hills runs. In the north-west corner, 
Snowdon towers among a number of heights 
over 3,000 feet. At its feet, to the north- 
west, the isle of Anglesey lies. The penin- 
sula of Lleyn, with a central ridge of rock, 
and slopes of pasture lands, runs to the 
south-west. To the east, beyond the Conway, 



4 A SHORY HISTORY OF WALES 

lie the Hiraethog mountains, with lower 
heights and wider reaches ; further east 
again, over the Clwyd, are the still lower 
hills of Flint. 

To the south, 30 miles as the crow flies, 
over the slate country, the Berwyns are seen 
clearly. From a peak among these — Cader 
Vronwen (2,573 ^ eet )> or tne Aran (2,970 
feet), or Cader Idris (2,929 feet) — we look 
east and south, over the hilly slopes of the 
upper Severn country. 

Another 30 miles to the south rises green 
Plinlimmon (2,469 feet) ; from it we see the 
high moorlands of central Wales, sloping to 
Cardigan Bay on the west and to the valley 
of the Severn, now a lordly English river, on 
the east. 

Forty miles south the Black Mountain 
(2,630 feet) rises beyond the Wye, and the 
Brecon Beacons (2,910 feet) beyond the Usk. 
West of these the hills fade away into the 
broad peninsula of Dyved. Southwards we 
look over hills of coal and iron to the 
pleasant sea-fringed plain of Gwent. 

On the north and the west the sea is 
shallow ; in some places it is under 10 
fathoms for 10 miles from the shore, and 
under 20 fathoms for 20 miles. Tales of 
drowned lands are told — of the sands of 



THE WANDERING NATIONS 5 

Lavan, of the feast of drunken Seithenyn, 
and of the bells of Aberdovey. But the 
sea is a kind neighbour. Its soft, warm 
winds bathe the hills with life ; and the 
great sweep of the big Atlantic waves into 
the river mouths help our commerce. Holy- 
head, Milford Haven. Swansea, Newport, 
Barry, and Cardiff — now one of the chief 
ports of the world — can welcome the largest 
vessels afloat. The herring is plentiful on 
the west coast, and trout and salmon in the 



rivers. 



II 

THE WANDERING NATIONS 

By land and by sea, race after race has 
come to make the hills of Wales its home. 
One race would be short, with dark eyes 
and black hair ; another would be tall, with 
blue eyes and fair hair. They came from 
different countries and along different paths, 
but each race brought some good with it. 
One brought skill in taming animals, until 
it had at last tamed even the pig and the 
bee ; another brought iron tools to take the 



6 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

place of stone ones. Another brought the 
energy of the chase and war, and another a 
delight in sailing a ship or in building a 
fortress. 

One thing they had in common — they 
wandered, and they wandered to the west. 
From the cold wastes and the dark forests 
of the north and east, they were ever push- 
ing west to more sunny lands. As far back 
as we can see, the great migration of nations 
to the west was going on. The islands of 
Britain were the furthest point they could 
reach ; for beyond it, at that time, no man 
had dared to sail into the unknown expanse 
of the ocean of the west. In the islands of 
Britain, the mountains of Wales were among 
the most difficult to win, and it was only the 
bravest and the hardiest that could make 
their home among them. 

The first races that came were short and 
dark. They came in tribes. They had 
tribal marks, the picture of an animal as a 
rule ; and they had a strange fancy that 
this animal was their ancestor. It may be 
that the local nicknames which are still 
remembered— such as "the pigs of Angle- 
sey," "the dogs of Denbigh," "the cats of 
Ruthin," "the crows of Harlech," " the gad- 
flies of Mawddwy " — were the proud tribe 



THE WANDERING NATIONS 7 

titles of these early people. Their weapons 
and tools were polished stone ; their hammers 
and hatchets and adzes, their lance heads 
and their arrow tips, were of the hardest 
igneous rock — chipped and ground with 
patient labour. 

The people who come first have the best 
chance of staying, if only they are willing to 
learn ; hardy plants will soon take the place 
of tender plants if left alone. The short 
dark people are still the main part, not only 
of the Welsh, but of the British people. It 
is true that their language has disappeared, 
except a few place-names. But languages 
are far more fleeting than races. The loss 
of its language does not show that a race 
is dead ; it only shows that it is very anxious 
to change and learn. Some languages easily 
give place to others, and we say that the 
people who speak these languages are good 
linguists, like Danes and Slavs. Other 
languages persist, those who speak them 
are unwilling to speak any new language, 
and this is the reason why Spanish and 
English are so widespread. 

After the short dark race came a tall fair- 
haired people. They came in families as 
well as in tribes. They had iron weapons 
and tools, and the short dark people could 



8 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

not keep them at bay with their bone-tipped 
spears and flint-headed arrows. We know 
nothing about the struggle between them. 
But it may be that the fairy stories we were 
told when children come from those far-off 
times. If a fairy maiden came from lake or 
mound to live among men, she vanished at 
once if touched with iron. Is this, learned 
men have asked, a dim memory of the 
victory of iron over stone ? 

The name given to the short dark man is 
usually Iberian ; the name given to the tall 
fair man who followed him is Celt. The 
two learnt to live together in the same 
country. The conqueror probably looked 
upon himself at first as the master of the 
conquered, then as simply belonging to 
a superior race, but gradually the distinc- 
tion vanished. The language remained 
the language of the Celt ; it is called 
an Aryan language, a language as noble 
among languages as the Aran is among 
its hills. It is still spoken in Wales, in 
Brittany, in Ireland, in the Highlands of 
Scotland, and in the Isle of Man. It was 
also spoken in Cornwall till the eighteenth 
century ; and Yorkshire dalesmen still count 
their sheep in Welsh. English is another 
Aryan tongue. 



THE WANDERING NATIONS 9 

The more mixed a nation is, the more 
rich its life and the greater its future. 
Purity of blood is not a thing to boast of, 
and no great and progressive nation comes 
from one breed of men. Some races have 
more imagination than others, or a finer 
feeling for beauty ; others have more energy 
and practical wisdom. The best nations 
have both ; and they have both, probably, 
because many races have been blended in 
their making. There is hardly a parish in 
Wales in which there are not different types 
of faces and different kinds of character. 

The wandering of nations has never really 
stopped. The Celt was followed by his 
cousins — the Angle and the Saxon. These, 
again, were followed by races still more 
closely related to them — the Normans and 
the Danes and the Flemings. They have 
all left their mark on Wales and on the 
Welsh character. 

The migration is still going on. Trace 
the history of an upland Welsh parish, and 
you will find that, in a surprisingly short 
time, the old families, high and low, have 
given place to newcomers. Look into the 
trains which carry emigrants from Hull or 
London to Liverpool on their way west — 
they have the blue eyes and yellow hair of 



io A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

those who came two thousand years ago. 
But this country is no longer their goal, 
the great continent of America has been 
discovered beyond. Fits of longing for 
wandering come over the Welsh periodically, 
as they came over the Danes — caused by 
scarcity of food and density of population, 
or by a sense of oppression and a yearning 
for freedom. An empty stomach sometimes, 
and sometimes a fiery imagination, sent a 
crowd of adventurers to new lands. And 
it is thus that every living nation is ever 
renewing its youth. 



Ill 

ROME 

It is not a spirit of adventure and daring 
alone that makes a nation. Rome rose to 
say that it must have the spirit of order and 
law too. It rose in the path of the nations ; 
it built the walls of its empire, guarded by the 
camps of its legions, right across it. For 
four hundred years the wandering of nations 
ceased ; the nations stopped— and they began 
to till the ground, to live in cities, to form 



ROME n 

states. The hush of this peace did not last, 
but the memory of it remained in the life of 
every nation that felt it. Unity and law 
tempered freedom and change. 

The name of Rome was made known, and 
made terrible, through Wales by a great 
battle fought on the eastern slopes of the 
Berwyn. The Romans had conquered the 
lands beyond the Severn, and had placed 
themselves firmly near the banks of that river 
at Glevum and Uriconium. Glevum is our 
Gloucester, and its streets are still as the 
Roman architect planned them. Uriconium 
is the burnt and buried city beyond Shrews- 
bury ; the skulls found in it, and its imple- 
ments of industry, and the toys ofits children, 
you can see in the Shrewsbury Museum. 

The British leader in the great battle was 
Caratacus, the general who had fought the 
Romans step by step until he had come to 
the borders of Wales, to summon the warlike 
Silures to save their country. We do not 
know the site of the great battle, though the 
Roman historian Tacitus gives a graphic 
description of it. The Britons were on a hill 
side sloping down to a river, and the Romans 
could only attack them in front. The enemy 
waded the river, however, and scaled the wall 
on its further bank ; and in the fierce lance 



12 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

and sword fight the host of Caratacus lost 
the day. He fled, but was afterwards handed 
over to the Romans, and taken to Rome, to 
grace the triumphal procession of the victors. 

The battle only roused the Silures to a 
more fierce resistance, and it cost the Romans 
many lives, and it took them many years, to 
break their power. The strangest sight that 
met the invaders was in Anglesey, after they 
had crossed the Menai on horses or on rafts. 
The druids tried to terrify them by the rites 
of their religion. The dark groves, the 
women dressed in black and carrying flam- 
ing torches, the aged priests — the sight 
paralysed the Roman soldiers, but only for a 
moment. 

Vespasian — it was he who sent his son 
Titus to besiege Jerusalem — became emperor 
in 69. The war was carried on with great 
energy, and by yS Wales was entirely 
conquered. 

Then Agricola, a wise ruler, came. The 
peace of Rome was left in the land ; and the 
Welshman took the Roman, not willingly at 
first, as his teacher and ruler instead of as 
his enemy. Towns were built ; the two 
Chesters or Caerlleons (Castra Legionum), 
on the Dee and the Usk, being the most 
important from a military point of view. 



ROME 13 

Roads were made ; two along the north and 
south coasts, to Carmarthen and Carnarvon ; 
two others ran parallel along the length of 
Wales, to connect their ends. On these 
roads towns rose ; and some, like Caer- 
went, were self-governing communities of 
prosperous people. Agriculture flourished ; 
the Welsh words for " plough " and " cheese " 
are " aradr " and " caws " — the Latin aratrum 
and caseus. The mineral wealth of the 
country was discovered ; and copper mines 
and lead mines, silver mines and gold mines, 
were worked. The "aur" (gold) and 
"arian" (silver) and "plwm" (lead) of the 
Welshman are the Latin atirum, argentttm, 
and plumbum. 

The Romans allowed the Welsh families 
and tribes to remain as before, and to be 
ruled by their own kings and chiefs. But 
they kept the defence of the country — the 
manning of the great wall in the north of 
Roman Britain, the garrisoning of the legion 
towns, and the holding of the western sea — 
in their own hand. 

Gradually the power of Rome began to 
wane, and its hold on distant countries like 
Britain began to relax. The wandering 
nations were gathering on its eastern and 
northern borders, and its walls and legions 



14 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

at last gave way. It had not been a kind 
mother to the nations it had conquered — 
in war it had been cruel, and in peace it 
had been selfish and stern. The lust of 
rule became stronger as its arm became 
weaker. The degradation of slavery and 
the heavy hand of the tax-gatherer were 
extending even to Wales. The barbarian 
invader found the effeminate, luxurious 
empire an easy prey. In 410 Alaric 
and his host of Goths appeared before 
the city of Rome itself; and a horde of 
barbarians, thirsting for blood and spoil, 
surged into it. The fall of the great city 
was a shock to the whole world ; the end 
of the world must be near, for how could 
it stand without Rome ? Jerome could 
hardly sob the strange news : " Rome, 
which enslaved the whole world, has itself 
been taken." 

Rome had taken the yoke of Christ ; and 
many said that it fell because it had spurned 
the gods that had given it victory. Three 
years after Alaric had sacked it, Augustine 
wrote a book to prove that it was not the 
city of God that had fallen ; and that the 
heathen gods could neither have built Rome 
in their love nor destroyed it in their anger. 
He then describes the rise of the real "City 



THE NAME OF CHRIST 15 

of God," in the midst of which is the God 
of justice and mercy, and " she shall not be 
moved." 



IV 
THE NAME OF CHRIST 

The name of Christ had been heard in 
Britain during the period of Roman rule, 
but we do not know who first sounded it. 
There are many beautiful legends — that 
the great apostle of the Gentiles himself 
came to Britain ; that Joseph of Arimathea, 
having been placed by the Jews in an 
open boat, at the mercy of wind and 
wave, landed in Britain ; that some of the 
captives taken to Rome with Caratacus 
brought back the tidings of great joy. 

We know that the name of Christ, 
between 200 and 300 years after His 
death, was well known in Britain, and that 
churches had been built for His worship. 
Between 300 and 400 we have an organised 
church and a settled creed. Between 400 
and 500 there was searching of heart and 
creed, and heresies — a sure sign that the 
people were alive to religion. Between 



16 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

500 and 600 there was a translation of 
the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into 
the better - known Latin. The whole of 
Wales becomes Christian ; and probably 
St David converted the last pagans, and 
built his church among them. 

Between 450 and 500 a stream of pagan 
Teutons flowed over the east of Britain, 
and the British Church was separated from 
the Roman Church. By 664 British and 
Roman missionaries had converted the 
English ; and the two Churches of Rome 
and Britain, once united, were face to face 
again. But they had grown in different 
ways, and refused to know each other. 
Their Easter came on different days ; they 
did not baptize in the same way ; the 
tonsure was different — a crescent on the 
forehead of the British monk, and a crown 
on the pate of the Roman monk. In the 
Roman Church there was rigid unity and 
system ; in the British Church there was 
much room for self-government. The 
newly converted English chose the Roman 
way, because they were told that St Peter, 
whose see Rome was, held the keys of 
heaven. Between 700 and 800 the Welsh 
gradually gave up their religious independ- 
ence, and joined the Roman Church. 



THE NAME OF CHRIST 17 

But there was another dispute. Were 
the four old Welsh bishoprics — Bangor, St 
Asaph, St David's, Llandaff — to be subject 
to the English archbishop of Canterbury, 
or to have an archbishopric of their own at 
St David's? By 1200 the Welsh bishoprics 
were subject to the English archbishop, and 
Giraldus Cambrensis came too late to save 
them. 

But through all these disputes the Church 
was gaining strength. Churches were being 
built everywhere. Up to 700 they were 
called after the name of their founder ; 
between 700 and 1000 they were generally 
dedicated to the archangel Michael — there 
are several Llanvihangels 1 in Wales ; after 
1000 new churches were dedicated to 
Mary, the Mother of Christ — we have 
many Llanvairs. 2 

Times of civil strife, or of popular in- 
difference, came over and over again ; and 
the old paganism tried to reassert itself. 
And time after time the name of Christ 
was sounded again by men who thought 
they had seen Him. In the twelfth century 
the Cistercian monk came to say that the 
world was bad, that prayer saved the soul, 

1 Mihangel = Michael. Llan Fihangel = St Michael's. 

2 Mair = Mary. Llan Fair = St Mary's. 

B 



18 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

and that labour was noble. 1 He was 
followed by the Franciscan friar, who said 
that deeds of mercy and love should be 
added to prayer, that Christ had been a 
poor man, and that men should help each 
other, not only in saving souls, but in 
healing sickness and relieving pain. In 
the fifteenth century the Lollard came to 
say that the Church was too rich, and that 
it had become blind to the truth, and Walter 
Brute said that men were to be justified 
by faith in Christ, not by the worship of 
images or by the merit of saints. In the 
sixteenth century came the Protestant, and 
the sway of Rome over Wales came to an 
end ; Bishop Morgan translated the Bible 
into Welsh, and John Penry yearned for 
the preaching of the Gospel in Wales. 
The Jesuit followed, calling himself by the 
name of Jesus, to try to win the country 
back again to Rome. Robert Jones toiled 
and schemed, and some laid down their 
lives. The Puritan came in the seven- 
teenth century to demand simple worship, 
and Morgan Lloyd thought that the 
second advent of Christ was at hand. 

1 About 1 29 1 the abbeys of Aberconway and Strata 
Marcella had over a hundred cows each, Whitland over a 
thousand sheep, and Basingwerk over two thousand. 



THE NAME OF CHRIST 19 

The Revivalist came in the eighteenth 
century, and, in the name of Christ, 
aroused the people of Wales to a new life 
of thought. 

After all this, you will be surprised to 
learn that many of the old gods still 
remain in Wales, and much of the old 
pagan worship. Who drops a pin into a 
sacred well, or leaves a tiny rag on a bush 
close by, and then wishes for something? 
A young maiden in the twentieth century, 
who sacrifices to a well heathen god. Until 
quite recently men thought that Ffynnon 
Gybi, and Ffynnon Elian, and Ffynnon 
Ddwynwen, had in them a power which 
could curse and bless, ruin and save. 

Lud of the Silver Hand was the god of 
flocks and ships. His caves are in Dyved 
still, and his was the temple on Ludgate 
Hill in London. Merlin was a god of know- 
ledge ; he could foretell events. Ceridwen 
was the goddess of wisdom ; she distilled 
wisdom-giving drops in a cauldron. Gwydion 
created a beautiful girl from flowers, "from 
red rose, and yellow broom, and white 
anemony." I am not quite sure what Coil 
did, but I have heard children singing the 
history of " old King Cole." Olwen also 
walked through Wales in heathen times, 



20 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

and it is said that three white flowers 
rose behind her wherever she had put her 
foot. 



V 

THE WELSH KINGS 

The spirit of Rome remained, though Rome 
itself had fallen. And Welsh kings rose to 
take the place of the Roman ruler, trying 
to force the tribes of Wales — of different 
races and tongues — to become one people. 

The chief Roman ruler, at any rate during 
the later wars against the invaders, was 
called Dux Britanniae, "the ruler of Britain." 
It became the aim of the ablest kings to 
restore the power of this officer, and to carry 
on his work, to rule and defend a united 
country. And I will tell you briefly how 
the kings ruled and defended Wales for 
more than five hundred years — how Maelgwn 
tried to unite it, how Rhodri tried to prevent 
the attacks of Saxon and Dane, how Howel 
gave it laws, and how Griffith tried to defend 
it against England. 

Between 400 and 450 Rome left Wales 



THE WELSH KINGS 2i 

to look after itself. An able family, called 
the House of Cunedda, took the power of 
the Dux Britanniae, and they translated 
the title into Gwledig — "the ruler of a 
gwlad (country)." Of this family Maelgwn 
Gwynedd is the most famous. It was his 
work to try to unite all the smaller kings 
or chiefs of Wales under his own power as 
"the island dragon." It was a difficult thing 
to persuade them ; they all wanted to be 
independent. A legend shows that Maelgwn 
tried guile as well as force. The kings met 
him at Aberdovey, and they all sat in their 
royal chairs on the sands. And Maelgwn 
said : " Let him be king over all who can 
sit longest on his chair as the tide comes 
in." But he had made his own chair of 
birds' wings, and it floated erect when all 
the other chairs had been thrown down. 
Before Maelgwn died of the yellow plague 
in 547, his strong arm had made Wales 
one united country, and had made every 
corner of it Christian. 

The new wave of nations, coming on as 
surely as the tide, began to beat against 
Wales. The Picts came from the northern 
parts of Britain, and Teutonic tribes swarmed 
across the eastern sea. The Angles came 
to the Humber, and spread over the plains 



22 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

of the north and the midlands of Roman 
Britain ; the Saxons came to the Thames, 
and won the plains and the downs of the 
south-east. In 577 the Saxons, after the 
battle of Deorham, pierced to the western 
sea at the mouth of the Severn ; they crept 
up along the valley of the Severn, burn- 
ing the great Roman towns. Before they 
reached Chester and the Dee, however, 
they were defeated at the battle of Fethanlea 
in 584. But the Angles soon appeared, 
from the north ; and after their victory at 
Chester in 613, they won the plains right 
to the Irish Sea. 

Wales was now surrounded on the land 
side by a people who spoke strange languages, 
and who worshipped different gods, for the 
Angles and the Saxons were heathens. 
From the sea also it was open to attack. 
Sometimes the Irish came. But the most 
feared of all were the Danes, whose sudden 
appearance and quick movements and des- 
perate onslaughts were the terror of the age. 
The <( black Danes" came from the fiords 
of Norway, the ''white Danes" from the 
plains of Sweden and Denmark. The Danes 
settled on the south coast : Tenby is a Danish 
name. Offa, the king of the Mercian Angles, 
took the rich lands between the Severn and 



THE WELSH KINGS 23 

the Wye ; but Offa's Dyke (Clawdcl Offa) 
is probably the work of some earlier people 
whose history has been lost. It was only 
by incessant fighting that the enemy could 
be kept at bay. 

Of all the kings who tried to defend his 
country against the enemies which now stood 
round it, the greatest is Rhodri, called Rhodri 
Mawr — "the Great." From 844 to 877, by 
battles on sea and land, he broke the spell 
of Danish and Saxon victories ; and his 
might and wisdom enabled him to lead his 
country in those dark days. Like Alfred 
of Wessex, who lived at the same time and 
faced the same task, he stemmed the torrent 
of Danish invasion and beat the sea-rovers 
on their own element. Like Alfred, he left 
warlike children and grandchildren. One of 
the grandsons was Howel the Good, who 
put the laws of Wales down in a book. 

Wales and England were now, both of 
them in their own way, trying to become 
one country. It was seen by many that 
strength and peace were better than division 
and war. In England, the Earls of Mercia 
and Wessex tried to rise into supreme power. 
In Wales Llywelyn ab Seisyll, victorious in 
many battles and wishing for peace, made 
the country rich and happy. Still, when 



24 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

he died in 1022, the princes said they would 
not obey another over-king. 

But the long ships full of Danes came 
again ; the Angles crossed the Severn : war 
and misery took the place of peace and 
plenty. Griffith, the son of Llywelyn, came 
to renew his father's work. In the battle 
of Rhyd y Groes on the Severn, in 1039, he 
drove the Mercians back ; in the battle of 
Pencader, in 1041, he crushed the opponents 
of Welsh unity; in 1044 he defeated the 
sea-rovers at Aber Towy. At the same 
time Harold, Earl of Wessex, was making 
himself king of England. A war broke out 
between Griffith and Harold ; and, during 
it, in 1063, the great Welsh king — " the 
head and the shield of the Britons " — was 
slain by traitors. 

So far I have told you about a few, only 
the greatest, kings of the House of Cunedda. 
I know that you are wondering where Arthur 
comes in. I am not quite sure that Arthur 
ever really lived, except in the mind of 
many ages. He is the spirit of Roman rule, 
the true Dux Britanniae, and he has all the 
greatness and ability of all the race of 
Cunedda. I have been shown mountains 
under which he sleeps, with his knights 
around him, waiting for the time when his 



THE LAWS OF HOWEL 25 

country is to be delivered. Let us hope 
that what Arthur represents — courage and 
wisdom, love of country and love of right — 
lives in the hearts of his people. 



VI 

THE LAWS OF HOWEL 

The two ideas which ruled Wales were — 
the love of order and the love of independ- 
ence. The danger of the first is oppression ; 
the dangers of the other are anarchy and 
weakness. Wales was sometimes united, 
under a Maelgwn or a Rhodri, and the 
princes obeyed them ; oftener, perhaps, the 
princes of the various parts ruled in their 
own way. 

The internal life of Wales is best seen in 
the laws of Howel the Good. Howel was 
the grandson of Rhodri ; and, about 950, 
he called four men from each district to 
Hendy Gwyn (Whitland) to state the laws 
of the country. Twelve of the wisest put 
the law together ; and the most learned 
scribe in Wales wrote it. 



26 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

It was thought that there should be one 
king over the whole people, but it was very 
rarely that every part of Wales obeyed one 
king. The country was divided into smaller 
kingdoms. In many ways Gwynedd was 
the most powerful. It was very easy to 
defend ; for it was made up of the island of 
Mon (Anglesey), the promontory of Lleyn, 
and the mountain mass of Snowdon. Its 
steep side was thus towards England, and 
its cornlands and pastures on the further 
side. It was also the home of the family 
of Cunedda, from Maelgwn to the last 
Llywelyn. 

Powys was the Berwyn country. Cere- 
digion was the western slope of the Plin- 
limmon range ; the eastern slopes had 
many smaller, but very warlike, districts. 
Deheubarth contained the pleasant glades 
and great forests of the Towy country. 
Dyved was the peninsula to the west ; the 
southern slopes of the Beacons were 
Mor^annwcr and Gwent. 

Howel the Good found that the laws of 
the various parts differed in details, and he 
gave different versions to the north, the 
south-west, and the south-east. But the 
law and life of the whole people, if we 
only look at important features, are one, 



THE LAWS OF HOWEL 27 

Several commotes made a cantrev, many 
cantrevs made a kingdom, many kingdoms 
made Wales. 

In each commote there were two kinds of 
people — the free or high-born, and the low- 
born or serfs. These may have been the 
conquering Celt and the conquered Iberian. 
It was very difficult for those in the lower 
class to rise to the higher ; but, after passing 
through the storms of a thousand years, the 
old dark line of separation was quite lost 
sight of. 

The free family lived in a great house — in 
the hendre ("old homestead") in winter, and 
in the mountain havoty ("summer house") 
in summer. The sides of the house were 
made of giant forest trees, their boughs 
meeting at the top and supporting the roof 
tree. The fire burnt in the middle of the 
hall. Round the walls the family beds were 
arranged. The family was governed by the 
head of the household (penteulu), whose 
word was law. 

The highest family in the land was that of 
the king. In his hall all took their own 
places, his chief of the household, his priest, 
his steward, his falconer, his judge, his bard, 
his chief huntsman, his mediciner, and others. 
The chief royal residences were Aberffraw 



28 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

in M6n, Mathraval in Powys, and Dynevor 
in Deheubarth. 

Old Welsh law was very unlike the law 
we obey now. I cannot tell you much about 
it in a short book like this, but it is worth 
noticing that it was very humane. We do 
not get in it the savage and vindictive 
punishments we get in some laws. I give 
you some extracts from the old laws of the 
Welsh. 

The king was to be honoured. According 
to the laws of Gwynedd, if any one did 
violence in his presence he had to pay a 
great fine — a hundred cows, and a white 
bull with red ears, for every cantrev the 
king ruled ; a rod of gold as long as the 
king himself, and as thick as his little finger ; 
and a plate of gold, as broad as the king's 
face, and as thick as a ploughman's nail. 

The judge, whether of the king's court 
or of the courts of his subjects, was to be 
learned, just, and wise. Thus, according 
to the laws of Dyved, was an inexperienced 
judge to be prepared for his great office ; 
he was to remain in the court in the king's 
company, to listen to the pleas of judges who 
came from the country, to learn the laws and 
customs that were in force, especially the 
three main divisions of law, and the value 



THE LAWS OF HOWEL 29 

of all tame animals, and of all wild beasts 
and birds that were of use to men. He was 
to listen especially to the difficult cases that 
were brought to the court, to be solved by 
the wisdom of the king. When he had lived 
thus for a year, he was to be brought to the 
church by the chaplain ; and there, over the 
relics and before the altar, he swore, in the 
presence of the great officers of the king's 
court, that he would never knowingly do 
injustice, for money or love or hate. He is 
then brought to the king, and the officers 
tell the king that he has taken the solemn 
oath. Then the king accepts him as a 
judge, and gives him his place. When he 
leaves, the king gives him a golden chess- 
board, and the queen gold rings, and these 
he is never to part with. 

I will tell you about one other officer — 
the falconer. Falconry was the favourite 
pastime of the kings and nobles of the 
time ; indeed, everybody found it very ex- 
citing to watch the long struggle in the air 
between the trained falcon and its prey, 
as each bird tried every skill of wing and 
talon that it knew. The falconer was to 
drink very sparingly in the king's hall, for 
fear the falcons might suffer ; and his 
lodging was to be in the king's barn, not 



3 o A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

in the king's hall, lest the smoke from the 
great fire-place should dim the falcon's 
sight. 



VII 
THE NORMANS 



On the death of Griffith ap Llywelyn, many 
princes tried to become supreme. Bleddyn 
of Powys, a good and merciful prince, 
became the most important. 

In January 1070, when the snow lay thick 
on the mountains, William, the Norman 
Conqueror, appeared at Chester with an 
army. He had defeated and killed Harold, 
the conqueror of Griffith ap Llywelyn, in 
1066 ; he had crushed the power of the 
Mercian allies of Bleddyn ; he had struck 
terror into the wild north, and England lay 
at his feet. 

He turned back from Chester, but he 
placed on the borders a number of barons 
who were to conquer Wales, as he had 
conquered England. They had a measure of 
his ability, of his energy, and of his ambition. 

The two great Norman traits were wisdom 



THE NORMANS 31 

and courage ; but the one was often mere 
cunning, and the other brutal ferocity. 
But no one like the Norman had yet 
appeared in Wales — no one with a vision 
so clear, or with so hard a grip. A hard, 
worldly, tenacious, calculating race they were ; 
and they turned their faces resolutely towards 
Wales. 

From England, Wales can be entered and 
attacked along three valleys — along the Dee, 
the Severn, and the Wye. At Chester, 
Hugh of Avranches, called " The Wolf," 
placed himself. From its walls he could 
look over and covet the Welsh hills, as he 
could have looked over the Breton hills from 
Avranches. He loved war and the chase : he 
despised industry, he cared not for religion ; 
he was a man of strong passions, but he 
was generous, and he respected worth of 
character. One of his followers, Robert, 
had all his vices and few of his virtues. 
It was he who extended the dominions of 
the Earl of Chester along the north coast 
to the Clwyd, where he built a castle at 
Rhuddlan ; and thence on to the valley of 
the Conway, where he built a castle at 
Deganwy. The cruelty of Robert shocked 
even the Normans of his time. He even 
set foot in Anglesey, which looked temptingly 



32 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

near from Deganwy, and built a castle at 
Aberlleiniog. 

At Shrewsbury, where the Severn, after 
leaving the mountains of Wales, turns to 
the south, Roger of Montgomery was 
placed, with his wife Mabel, an energetic 
little woman, hated and feared by all. 
Roger himself, while ever ready to fight, 
preferred to get what he wanted by 
persuasion ; he was not less cruel than 
Hugh of Chester, but he was less fond of 
war. He and his sons pushed their way 
up the Severn, and built a castle at 
Montgomery. 

To Hereford, on the Wye, William Fitz- 
Osbern came. He was the ablest, perhaps, 
of all the followers of the Conqueror. 
He entered Wales ; he saw it from the 
Wye to the sea, and he thought it was 
not lar^e enough, and that it was too 
far from the political life of the time. So 
he went back to Normandy, but he left 
his sons William and Roger behind him. 
William had his father's wisdom. Roger 
had his father's recklessness in action ; he 
rebelled against his own king, and found 
himself in prison. The king sent him, on 
the day of Christ's Passion, a robe of silk 
and rarest ermine. The caged baron made 



THE NORMANS 33 

a roaring fire, and cast the robe into it. 
"By the light of God," said William the 
Conqueror, for that was his wicked oath, 
"he shall never leave his prison." 

But another Norman, Bernard of Neuf- 
marche, came to take his place. He 
built his castle at Brecon, and defeated 
and killed Rees, the King of Deheubarth ; 
and, with great energy, he took possession 
of the upper valleys of the Wye and the 
Usk. 

Further south William the Conqueror 
himself came to Cardiff, and possibly built 
a castle. The Norman conquest of the 
south coast of Wales was exceedingly 
rapid, and castle after castle rose to mark 
the new victorious advances — Coety, Cen- 
fig, Neath, Kidwelly, Pembroke, Newport, 
Cilgeran. 

So far, the Norman advance has been a 
most quick one. In less than twenty-five 
years from the appearance of the Conqueror 
at Chester, the whole country had been 
overrun except the mountains of Gwynedd 
and the forests of the Deheubarth. This 
success is easily explained. 

For one thing, the Normans had trained, 
professional soldiers, who were well horsed 
and well armed. In a pitched battle the 

c 



34 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

hastily collected Welsh levies, unused to 
regular battle and very lightly armed, had 
no chance. 

Again, the Norman never receded. He 
was willing to stop occasionally, in order 
to bide his time ; but he clung tenaciously 
to every mile he had won. His skill as a 
castle builder was as striking as his prowess 
in battle or his cautious wisdom in council. 
He took possession of an old fortified post, 
or hastily constructed one of turf and timber ; 
but he soon turned it into a castle of stone. 
At that time the Welsh had no knowledge 
of sieges ; and their impetuous valour was 
of no use against the new castles. 

Again, the Welsh opposition was not only 
not organised, but weakened by internal 
strife. While the Norman was winning 
valley after valley, the Welsh princes were 
trying to decide by the issue of battle who 
was to be chief. Bleddyn was slain in 1075 ; 
and his nephews and cousins tried to rule 
the country. Among these, Trahaiarn was 
a soldier of ability and energy, and a ruler 
of real genius. But he was the rival of the 
exiled princes of the House of Cunedda, 
and he found it difficult to bend Snowdon 
and the Vale of Towy to his will. Two 
of the exiles met him, probably near some 



GRIFFITH AP CONAN 35 

of the cairns in the valley of the Teivy ; 
and there, in the battle of Mynydd Cam, 
fiercely fought through the dusk into a 
moonlight night in 1079, Trahaiarn fell. 
It looked as if no leader could rise in Wales 
to fight a Norman army or to take a Norman 
castle. 



VIII 

GRIFFITH AP CONAN AND 
GRIFFITH AP REES 

In the battle of Mynydd Cam, a young 
chief led the shining shields of the men of 
Gwynedd. He was Griffith, the son of a 
prince of the line of Cunedda and of a sea- 
rover's daughter. He was mighty of limb, 
fair and straight to see, with the blue eyes 
and flaxen hair of the ruling Celt. In battle, 
he was full of fury and passion ; in peace, he 
was just and wise. His people saw at first 
that he could fight a battle ; then they found 
he could rule a country. And it was he that 
was to say to the Norman : " Thus far shalt 
thou come, and no further." 

When Bleddyn died in 1075, Griffith came 



36 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

to Gwynedd, and found that his father's lands 
were under new. rulers. Robert of Rhuddlan 
and Trahaiarn of Arwystli were mighty foes ; 
but Griffith drove both of them back ; and, 
by his prowess and success in battle, broke 
the spell of conquest which kept Gwynedd 
in bonds. But his enemies attacked him 
again from all sides ; and, while Hugh the 
Wolf and Robert of Rhuddlan were laying 
Gwynedd waste, Trahaiarn and Griffith 
met at the hard-fought battle of Bron yr 
Erw. Griffith lost the day, and again be- 
came a sea-rover. He sailed to Dyved, and 
there he met Rees, the King of Deheubarth, 
who also was of the line of Cunedda, and 
had been driven from his land by the 
Normans. The two chiefs joined, and they 
crushed Trahaiarn at Mynydd Cam. Then 
they turned against the Normans. 

Rees soon fell in battle, and left two 
children, Nest and Griffith. The beauty 
of Nest and the genius of Rees ap Griffith 
fill an important page in the history of their 
country. Nest became the mother of the 
conquerors of Ireland ; Rees became the 
greatest of all the kings of South Wales. 

The Normans found that the Welsh had 
taken heart. Of their opponents, they feared 
three : Griffith ap Conan, Owen of Powys, 



GRIFFITH AP CONAN 37 

and Griffith ap Rees. The kings of England, 
the two sons of the Conqueror — red, brutal 
William and cool, treacherous Henry — had 
to come to help their barons. 

Griffith ap Conan had a long life of strife 
and success. In his struggle with Hugh the 
Wolf, he was once in The Wolfs prison, and 
more than once he had to flee to the sea. 
But, backed up by the liberty - loving sons 
of Snowdon and by his sea-roving kinsmen, 
he made Gwynedd strong and prosperous. 
He drove the Normans from Anglesey ; he 
attacked and killed Robert of Rhuddlan ; he 
saw the red King of England himself forced 
by storm and rain to beat a retreat from 
Snowdon. He was loved by his people 
during his youth of adventure and battle, 
and during his old age of safe counsel and 
love of peace. His wife Angharad and his 
son Owen live with him in the memory of 
his country. When he died, in 1 137, it was 
said that he had saved his people, had ruled 
them justly, and had given them peace. 

In the Severn country the princes of 
Powys were fighting against the Normans 
also, especially against the family of Mont- 
gomery. The sons of Bleddyn — Cadogan, 
Iorwerth, and Meredith — were driving the 
invaders from the valley of the Severn, and 



38 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

from Dyved, defeating their armies in battle, 
and storming their castles. Sometimes they 
would make alliances with them, and defy 
the King of England. But it is difficult to 
follow each of them. The history of one of 
them, Owen ap Cadogan, is like a romance. 
He was brave and handsome, in love with 
Nest, and a very firebrand in politics. The 
army of Henry I. was too strong for him, 
and he had to submit. He then became 
the friend of the King of England. It was 
the aim of the princes of Powys to be free, 
not only from the Norman, but also from 
Griffith of Gwynedd and Griffith of Deheu- 
barth. They were an able and versatile 
family ; noble and base deeds, revolting 
crimes and sweet poems, come in the stirring 
story of their lives. 

What Griffith did in the north, and the 
sons of Bleddyn in the east, Griffith ap 
Rees did in the south ; he showed that the 
Norman army could be beaten in battle, and 
that a Norman castle could be taken by 
assault. After his father's death he spent 
much of his youth in exile or in hiding : 
sometimes we find him in Ireland, sometimes 
in the court of Griffith ap Conan, sometimes 
with his sister Nest — now the wife of 
Gerald, the custodian of Pembroke Castle. 



GRIFFITH AP REES 39 

But he had one aim ever before him — to 
recover his father's kingdom and to make 
his people free. Castle after castle rose — at 
Swansea, Carmarthen, Llandovery, Cenarth, 
Aberystwyth — to warn him that the hold of 
the Norman on the land was tightening. 
He came to the forests of the Towy ; his 
people rallied round him, and his power 
extended from the Towy to the Teivy, and 
from the Teivy to the Dovey. His wife, 
the heroic Gwenllian — who died leading her 
husband's army against the Normans — was 
Griffith ap Conan's daughter. The great 
final battle between Griffith and the Normans 
was fought at Cardigan in 1 1 36, in which the 
great prince won a memorable victory over 
the strongest army the Normans could put 
in the field. In 11 37 he died, and they said 
of him that he had shown his people what 
they ought to do, and that he had given 
them strength to do it. 

The work of Griffith ap Conan and Griffith 
ap Rees was this : they set bounds to the 
Norman Conquest, and saved Deheubarth 
and Gwynedd from the stern rule of the 
alien. But, though the Norman was not 
allowed to bring his stone castle and cruel 
law, what good he brought with him was 
welcomed. The piety of the Norman, his 



40 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

intellectual curiosity, and his spirit of adven- 
ture, conquered in Welsh districts where his 
coat of mail and his castle were not seen. 



IX 

OWEN GWYNEDD AND THE LORD 
REES 

The men who opposed the Normans left 
able successors — Owen Gwynedd followed 
his father, Griffith ap Conan ; the Lord Rees 
followed his father Griffith ap Rees ; and in 
Powys the sons of Bleddyn were followed 
by the castle builder Howel, and by the 
poet Owen Cyveiliog. 

Owen Gwynedd ruled from 1 1 37 to 1169 ; 
the Lord Rees from 1137 to 1197. The 
age was, in many respects, a great one. 

It was, of course, an age of war. Up to 
1 1 54, during the reign of Stephen, the 
English barons were fighting against each 
other, and the king had very little power 
over them. The most important Norman 
barons in Wales were the Earls of Chester in 
the valley of the Dee, the Mortimers on the 



OWEN GWYNEDD 41 

upper Wye, the Braoses on the upper Usk, 
and the Clares in the south. Their castles 
were a continual menace to the country they 
had so far failed to conquer, and the Lord 
Rees was glad to get Kidwelly, and Owen 
Gwynedd to get Mold and Rhuddlan. 

It was, on the whole, an age of unity. 

It was the chief aim of Owen Gwynedd 

to be the ally of the Lord Rees ; and in 

this he succeeded, though his brother Cad- 

waladr, in his desire for Ceredigion, had killed 

Rees' brother, to Owen's infinite sorrow. 

The princes of Powys, Madoc and Owen 

Cyveiliog, were in the same alliance also, 

and they were helped in their struggle with 

the Normans. Unity was never more 

necessary. Henry II. brought great armies 

into Wales. Once he came along the north 

coast to Rhuddlan. At another time he 

tried to cross the Berwyn, but was beaten 

back by great storms. Had he reached the 

upper Dee, he would have found the united 

forces of the Lord Rees, Owen Cyveiliog, 

and Owen Gwynedd at Corwen. There are 

many stirring episodes in these wars : the 

fight at Consilt, when Henry II. nearly lost 

his life ; the scattering of his tents on the 

Berwyn by a storm that seemed to be the 

fury of fiends ; the reckless exposure of life 



42 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

in storming a wall or in the shock of battle. 
But the Norman brought new cruelty into 
war: Henry II. took out the eyes of young 
children because their fathers had revolted 
against him ; and William de Braose invited 
a great number of Welsh chiefs to a feast 
in his castle at Abergavenny, and there 
murdered them all. 

It is a relief to turn to another feature 
of the age : it was an age of great men. 
Owen Gwynedd was probably the greatest. 
He disliked war, but he was an able general ; 
he made Henry II. retire without great loss 
of life to his own army. He was a thought- 
ful prince, of a loving nature and high ideals, 
and his court was the home of piety and 
culture. He is more like our own ideal of 
a prince than any of the other princes of 
the Middle Ages. The Lord Rees was not 
less wise, and his life is less sorrowful and 
more brilliant. He also was as great as 
a statesman as he was as a general ; and 
he made his peace with the English king 
in order to make his country quiet and rich. 
Owen Cyveiliog was placed in a more 
difficult position than either of his allies ; 
he was nearer to very ambitious Norman 
barons. He was great as a warrior ; often 
had his white steed been seen leading the 



OWEN GWYNEDD 43 

rush of battle. He was greater as a states- 
man : friend and foe said that Owen was 
wise ; and he was greater still as a poet. 

The age was an age of poetry. A 
generation of great Welsh poets found an 
equal welcome in the courts of Gwynedd, 
Powys, and Deheubarth ; and even the 
Norman barons of Morgannwg began to 
feel the charm of Welsh legend and song ; 
Robert of Gloucester was a great patron 
of learning. One of the chief events of 
the period was Lord Rees' great Eisteddvod 
at Cardigan in 1176. 

It was an age of new ideals. The 
Crusades were preached in Wales ; the 
grave of Christ was held by a cruel 
unbeliever, and it was the duty of a soldier 
to rescue it. It appealed to an inborn 
love of war, and many Welshmen were 
willing to go. It did good by teaching 
them that, in fighting, they were not to 
fight for themselves. It was in Powys 
that feuds were most bitter. A young 
warrior told a preacher, who was trying to 
persuade him to take the cross : " I will not 
go until, with this lance, I shall have avenged 
my lord's death." The lance immediately 
became shivered in his hand. The lance 
once used for blind feuds was gradually 



44 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

consecrated to the service of ideals — of 
patriotism or of religion. 

The age of Owen Gwynedd and the 
Lord Rees and Owen Cyveiliog brought 
a higher ideal still. If the Crusader made 
war sacred, the monk made labour noble. 
The chief aim of the monk, it is true, was 
to save his soul. He thought the world 
was very bad, as indeed it was ; and he 
thought he could best save his own soul 
by retiring to some remote spot, to live a 
life of prayer. But he also lived a life of 
labour ; he became the best gardener, 
the best farmer, and the best shepherd of 
the Middle Ages. Great monasteries were 
built for him, and great tracts of land were 
given him, by those who were anxious that 
he should pray for their souls. The monk 
who came to Wales was the Cistercian. The 
monasteries of Tintern, Margam, and Neath 
were built by Norman barons ; and Strata 
Florida, Valle Crucis, and Basingwerk 
showed that the Welsh princes also welcomed 
the monks. 

Better, then, than the brilliant wars were 
the poets and the great Eisteddvod. Better 
still, perhaps, were the orchards and the 
flocks of the peaceful monks. 



LLYWELYN THE GREAT 45 

X 

LLYWELYN THE GREAT 

On the death of the Lord Rees, one of the 
grandsons of Owen Gwynedd becomes the 
central figure in Welsh history. Llywelyn 
the Great rose into power in 1194, an d 
reigned until 1240 — a long reign, and in 
many ways the most important of all the 
reigns of the Welsh princes. 

Llywelyns first task was to become sole 
ruler in Gwynedd. The sons of Owen 
Gwynedd had divided the strong Gwynedd 
left them by their father, and their nobles 
and priests could not decide which of the 
sons was to be supreme. Iorwerth, the poet 
Howel, David, Maelgwn, Rhodri, tried to 
get Gwynedd, or portions of it. Eventually, 
David I. became king ; but soon a strong 
opposition placed Llywelyn, the able son of 
Iorwerth, on the throne. Uncles and cousins 
showed some jealousy ; but the growing 
power of Llywelyn soon made them obey 
him with gradually diminishing envy. 

His next task was to attach the other 
princes of Wales to him, now that the Lord 



46 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

Rees and Owen Cyveiliog were dead. To 
begin with, he had to deal with the astute 
Gwenwynwyn, the son of Owen Cyveiliog ; 
and he had to be forced to submit. He 
then turned to the many sons and grand- 
sons of the Lord Rees — Maelgwn and 
Rees the Hoarse especially. They called 
John, King of England, into Wales ; but 
they soon found that Llywelyn was a 
better master than John and his barons. 
Gradually Llywelyn established a council of 
chiefs — partly a board of conciliation, and 
partly an executive body. It was nothing 
new ; but it was a striking picture of the 
way in which Llywelyn meant to join the 
princes into one organised political body. 

His third task was to begin to unite 
Norman barons and Welsh chiefs under 
his own rule. He had to begin in the old 
way, by using force ; and Ranulph of Chester 
and the Clares trembled for the safety of 
their castles. He then offered political 
alliance ; and some of the Norman families 
of the greatest importance in the reign of 
John — the Earl of Chester, the family of 
Braose, and the Marshalls of Pembroke — 
became his allies. His other step was to 
unite Welsh and Norman families by 
marriage. He himself married a daughter 



LLYWELYN THE GREAT 47 

of King John, and he gave his own 
daughters in marriage to a Braose and a 
Mortimer. It is through the dark-haired 
Gladys, who married Ralph Mortimer, that 
the kings of England can trace their descent 
from the House of Cunedda. 

Llywelyn's last great task was to make 
relations between England and Wales 
relations of peace and amity. During his 
long reign, he saw three kings on the 
throne of England — the crusader Richard, 
the able John, and the worthless and mean 
Henry III. It was with John that he 
had most to do, the king whose origin- 
ality and vices have puzzled and shocked 
so many historians. John helped him to 
crush Gwenwynwyn, then helped the jealous 
Welsh princes to check the growth of his 
power. Llywelyn saw that it was his 
policy, as long as John was alive, to join 
the English barons. They were then try- 
ing to force Magna Carta upon the King, 
that great document which prevented John 
from interfering with the privileges of his 
barons. In that document John promises, 
in three clauses, that he will observe the 
rights of Welshmen and the law of Wales. 

When John died in 12 16, and his young 
son Henry succeeded him, the policy of 



48 A SHORY HISTORY OF WALES 

England was guided by William Marshall, 
Earl of Pembroke. William Marshall was 
one of the ministers of Henry II. ; and, 
by his marriage with the daughter of 
Strongbow, the conqueror of Ireland, he 
had become Earl of Pembroke. It was 
with him that Llywelyn had now to deal. 
He was too strong in Pembroke to be 
attacked, but his very presence made it 
easier for Llywelyn to retain the allegiance 
of the chiefs who would have been in 
danger from the Norman barons if Llywelyn's 
protection were taken away. In 12 19 the 
great William Marshall died ; and changes 
in English politics forced his sons into an 
alliance with Llywelyn. 

Llywelyn's title of Great is given him 
by his Norman and English contemporaries. 
He was great as a general ; his detection 
of trouble before the storm broke, his 
instant determination and rapidity of move- 
ments, his ever - ready munitions for battle 
and siege, made his later campaigns always 
successful. He felt that he was carrying 
on war in his own country ; so his wars 
were not wars of devastation, but the crush- 
ing of armies and the razing of castles. 

He took an interest in the three great 
agents in the civilisation of the time — the 



LLYWELYN THE GREAT 49 

bard, the monk, and the friar. The bard 
was as welcome as ever at his court ; the 
monk, welcomed by Owen Gwynedd before, 
was given another home at Aber Conway. 
Llywelyn extended his welcome to the friar, 
and he was given a home at Llan Vaes in 
Anglesey, on the shores of the Menai. The 
friar brought a higher ideal than that of 
the monk ; his aim was salvation, not by 
prayer in the solitude of a mountain glen, 
but by service where men were thickest 
together — even in streets made foul by 
vice, and haunted by leprosy. Of the Mendi- 
cant Orders, the Franciscans were the best 
known in Wales ; and, of all Orders of that 
day, it was they who sympathised most 
deeply with the sorrows of men. And it 
was this which, a little later on, brought 
them so much into politics. 

Great and successful in war and policy, in 
touch with the noblest influences in the life 
of the time, Llywelyn applied himself to one 
last task. His companions and allies had 
nearly all died before him ; but he wished 
that the peace and unity, which they had 
established, should live after them. He had 
two sons — Griffith, who was the champion 
of independence ; and David, who wished 
for peace with England. Llywelyn laid 

D 



So A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

more stress on strong government at home 
than on the repudiation of feudal allegiance 
to the King of England. So he persuaded 
the council of princes at Strata Florida to 
accept David as his successor. 



XI 
THE LAST LLYWELYN 

David II., a mild and well-meaning prince, 
was too weak to carry his father's policy out. 
He tried to maintain peace, and did homage 
to his uncle, the King of England. But, as 
the head of the patriotic party, his more 
energetic brother, Griffith, opposed him. By 
guile he caught Griffith, and shut him in a 
castle on the rock of Criccieth. The other 
princes shook off the yoke of Gwynedd, and 
Henry III. tried to play the brothers against 
each other. David sent Griffith to Henry, 
who put him in the Tower of London. In 
trying to escape, his rope broke, and he fell 
to the ground dead. Soon afterwards, in 
1246, in the middle of a war with Henry, 
David died of a broken heart. 



THE LAST LLYWELYN 51 

The sons of Griffith — Owen, Llywelyn, 
and David — at once took their uncle's place ; 
and by 1255 Llywelyn ap Griffith was sole 
ruler. By that year Henry III. had given 
his young son Edward the earldom of 
Chester, which had fallen to the crown, 
and the lands between the Dee and the 
Conway, which he claimed by a treaty 
with the dead Griffith. Thus Edward and 
Llywelyn began their long struggle. 

Between 1255 and 1267 Llywelyn tries to 
recover his grandfather's position in Wales. 
In 1255 his power extended over Gwynedd 
only. He found it easy to extend it over 
most of Wales, because the rule of the 
English officials made the Welsh chiefs long 
for the protection of Gwynedd. The Barons' 
War paralysed the power of the King, and 
Llywelyn made an alliance with Simon de 
Montfort and the barons. Even after Mont- 
fort's fall in 1265 the barons were so powerful 
that the King was still at their mercy. In 
1267 Llywelyn's position as Prince of Wales 
was recognised in the Treaty of Montgomery. 
His sway extended from Snowdon to the 
Dee on the east, and to the Teivy and the 
Beacons on the south — practically the whole 
of modern Wales, except the southern sea- 
board. Within these wide bounds all the 



52 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

Welsh barons were to swear fealty to 
Llywelyn, the only exception being Meredith 
ap Rees of Deheubarth. 

The second struggle of Llywelyn's reign 
took place between 1267 and 1277. tie 
tried to weld his land into a closer union, 
and many of the chiefs of the south and east 
became willing to call in the English King. 
Two of them, his own brother David and 
Griffith of Powys, fled to England, and were 
received by Edward, who had been king 
since 1272. Llywelyn and Edward dis- 
trusted each other. Edward wished to unite 
Britain in a feudal unity, and to crush all 
opponents. Llywelyn thought of helping 
the barons ; he might become their leader. 
Eleanor, the daughter of Simon de Montfort, 
the old leader of the barons, was betrothed 
to him. War broke out. The barons — 
Clares and Mortimers, and all — joined the 
King. Llywelyn's dominions were invaded 
at all points, his barons had to yield, one 
after the other; and finally, in 1277, 
Llywelyn had to accept the Treaty of 
Rhuddlan. His dominions shrunk to the 
old limits of Snowdon, his sway over the 
rest of Wales was taken from him, and the 
title of Prince of Wales was to cease with 
his life. 



THE LAST LLYWELYN 53 

The third struggle was between 1277 and 
1282. The rule of the new officials drove 
the Welsh to revolt; and the chiefs who 
had opposed Llywelyn, especially his brother 
David, begged for Llywelyn's protection. 
Eleanor, Llywelyn's wife and Edward's 
cousin, tried to keep the peace, but she 
died while they were arming for the last 
bitter war of 1282. 

It was comparatively easy for Edward to 
overrun Powys or Deheubarth, if he had 
an army strong enough. But at that time 
Gwynedd was almost impregnable. From 
Conway to Harlech lies the vast mass of 
Snowdon, a great natural rampart running 
from sea to sea. Its steep side is towards 
the east, and the invader found before him 
heights which he could not climb, and round 
which he could not pass. If you stand in 
the Vale of Conway, look at the hills on the 
Arvon side — the great natural wall of inmost 
Gwynedd, with its last tower, the Penmaen 
Mawr, rising right from the sea. The gentle 
slopes are to the west, and there the corn 
and flocks were safe. 

Edward had to put a large army into the 
field, and it cost him much. In the war 
with Llywelyn he had to change the 
English army entirely ; and, in order to get 



54 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

money, he had to allow the Parliament to 
get life and power. To carry supplies, and 
to land men in Anglesey to turn the flank 
of the Welsh, he wanted a fleet. But there 
was no royal navy then, and the fishermen 
of the east coast and the south coast — who 
had no quarrel with the Welsh, but were 
very anxious to fight each other — were not 
willing to lose their fish harvest in order to 
fight so far away. 

In 1282, Edward's great army closed 
round Snowdon. The chiefs still faithful to 
Llywelyn had to yield or flee. But winter 
was coming on, and could Edward keep 
his army in the field ? An attempt had been 
made to enter Snowdon from Anglesey, but 
the English force was destroyed at Moel y 
Don. It looked as if Edward would have to 
retire. Llywelyn left Snowdon, and went 
to Ceredigion and the Vale of Towy to 
put new heart in his allies, and from there 
he passed on to the valley of the Wye. 
He meant, without a doubt, to get the 
barons of the border, Welsh and English, 
to unite against Edward. But in some 
chance skirmish a soldier slew him, not 
knowing who he was. When they heard 
that their Prince was fallen, his men in 
Snowdon entirely lost heart. They had 



CONQUERED WALES 55 

no faith in David, and in a few months 
the whole of Wales was at Edward's 
feet. 



XII 

CONQUERED WALES 

The war between Edward and Llywelyn 
was not a war between England and Wales> 
as we think of these countries now. Some 
of the best soldiers under Edward were 
Welsh, especially the bowmen who followed 
the Earl of Gloucester and Roger Mortimer 
from the Wye and Severn valleys. 

It is not right that we Welshmen should 
feel bitter against England, because, in this 
last war, Edward won and Llywelyn fell. 
It is easy to say that Edward was cruel 
and faithless, and it is easy to say that 
Llywelyn was shifty and obstinate ; but it is 
quite clear that each of them thought that 
he was right. Edward thought that Britain 
ought to be united : Llywelyn thought Wales 
ought to be free. Now, happily, we have 
the union and the freedom. 

On the other hand, I should not like you 
to think that Wales was more barbarous 



56 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

than England, or Llywelyn less civilised 
than Edward I. Giraldus Cambrensis saw 
a prince going barefoot, and the fussy- 
little Archbishop Peckham saw that Welsh 
marriage customs were not what he liked ; 
and many historians, who have never read 
a line of Welsh poetry, take for granted 
that the conquest of Wales was a new 
victory for civilisation. 

In many ways Wales was more civilised 
than England at that time. Its law was 
more simple and less developed, it is true ; 
but it was more just in many cases, and 
certainly more humane. Was it not better 
that the land should belong to the people, 
and that the youngest son should have the 
same chance as the eldest ? And, in crime, 
was it not better that if no opportunity 
for atonement was given, the death of the 
criminal was to be a merciful one ? In 
the reign of John, a Welsh hostage, a little 
boy of seven, was hanged at Shrewsbury, 
because his father, a South Wales chief, 
had rebelled. In the reign of Edward I., 
the miserable David was dragged at the 
tails of horses through the streets of the 
same town, and the tortures inflicted on the 
dying man were too horrible to describe to 
modern ears And what the Norman baron 



CONQUERED WALES 57 

did, his Welsh tenant learnt to do. In Wales 
you get fierce frays and frequent shedding of 
blood ; on the borders you get callous cruelty 
to a prisoner, or the disfiguring of dead 
bodies — even that of Simon de Montfort, 
the greatest statesman of the Middle Ages 
in Eneland — on the battlefield when all 
passion was spent. 

Take the rulers of Wales again. Griffith 
ap Conan and Llywelyn the Great had the 
energy and the foresight, though their 
sphere was so much smaller, of Henry II. 
And what English king, except Alfred, 
attracts one on account of lovableness of 
character as Owen Gwynedd and Owen 
Cyveiliog and the Lord Rees do? 

When Edward entered into Snowdon, 
Welsh was spoken to the Dee and the 
Severn, and far beyond. There were many 
dialects, as there are still, though any two 
Welshmen could understand each other 
wherever they came from, with a little 
patience, as they can still. But there was 
also a literary language, and this was under- 
stood, if not spoken, by the chiefs all through 
the country. It was more like the Welsh 
spoken in mid-Wales — especially in the valley 
of the Dovey — than any other. There are 
many signs of civilisation ; one of them is 



58 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

the possession of a literary language — for 
romance and poem, for court and Eisteddvod. 

Conquered Wales may be divided into 
two parts — the Wales conquered by the 
Norman barons and the Wales conquered 
by the English king. 

The Wales conquered by the English 
king was the country ruled by Llywelyn 
and his allies. In 1284, by the statute of 
Rhuddlan, it was formed into six shires. 
The Snowdon district — which held out last 
— was made into the three shires of 
Anglesey, Carnarvon, and Merioneth. The 
part of the land between Conway and Dee 
that belonged to the king, not to barons, 
was made into the shire of Flint. The 
lands of Llywelyn's allies beyond the Dovey 
were made into the shires of Cardigan and 
Carmarthen. Instead of the chiefs of the 
Welsh prince, the king's sheriffs and 
justices ruled the country. But much of 
the old law remained. 

The Wales conquered by the Norman 
barons lay to the east and south of the 
Wales turned into shires in 1284. It in- 
cluded the greater part of the valleys of 
the Clwyd, Dee, Severn, and Wye ; and 
the South Wales coast from Gloucester to 



CONQUERED WALES ' 59 

Pembroke. It remained in the possession 
of lords who were subject to the King of 
England, but who ruled almost like kings 
in their own lordships. The laws and 
customs of the various lordships differed 
greatly ; sometimes the lord used English 
law, and sometimes Welsh law. The great 
ruling families changed much in wealth 
and power, from century to century. In 
Llywelyn's time the most important were 
the Clares (Gloucester and Glamorgan), 
the Mortimers (Wigmore and Chirk), Lacy 
(Denbigh), Warenne (Bromfield and Yale), 
Fitzalan (Oswestry), Bohun (Brecon), Braose 
(Gower), and Valence (Pembroke). 

Llywelyn was the last prince of inde- 
pendent Wales. From that time on, the title 
is conferred by the King of England on 
his eldest son, who is then crowned. The 
present Prince of Wales also comes, through 
a daughter of Llywelyn the Great, from the 
House of Cunedda, the princes of which 
ruled Wales from Roman times to 1284. Of 
all the houses that have gone to make the 
royal house, this is the most ancient. 



60 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

XIII 

CASTLE AND LONG-BOW 

So far I have told you very little about war, 
except that a battle was fought and lost, or a 
castle built or taken. 

War has two sides — attack and defence. 
New ways of attacking and defending are 
continually devised. When the art of 
defence is more perfect than the art of 
attack, the world changes very little, for the 
strong can keep what he has gained. When 
the art of attack is the more perfect, new 
men have a better chance, and many changes 
are made. The chief source of defence was 
the castle, the chief weapon of attack was 
the long-bow. Wales contains the most 
perfect castles in this country ; it is also the 
home of the long-bow. From 1066 to 1284 
England and Wales were conquered, and 
the conquest was permanent because castles 
were built. From 1284 to 146 1, England 
and Wales attacked other countries, and the 
weapon which gave them so many victories 
was the long-bow. 

I will tell you about the castles first, about 



CASTLE AND LONG-BOW 61 

the Norman castles and about the Edwardian 
castles. 

The Norman castle was a square keep, 
with walls of immense thickness, sometimes 
of 20 feet. But if the Norman had to build 
on the top of a hill or on the ruins of an old 
castle, he did not try to make the new castle 
square, but allowed its walls to take the form 
of the hill or of the old castle ; and this kind 
of castle was called a shell keep. The outer 
and inner casino- of the wall would be of 
dressed stone, the middle part was chiefly 
rubble. At first, if they had plenty of 
supplies, a very few men could hold a castle 
against an army as long as they liked. 
These were the castles built by the Norman 
invaders to retain their hold over the Welsh 
districts they conquered. 

But many ways of storming a castle were 
discovered. They could be scaled by means 
of tall ladders, especially in a stealthy night 
attack. Stones could be thrown over the 
walls by mangonels to annoy the garrison. 
Sometimes a wall could be brought down 
by a battering-ram. But the quickest and 
surest way was by mining. The miners 
worked their way to the wall, and then 
began to take some of the stones of the 
outer casing out, propping the wall up with 



62 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

beams of wood. When the hole was big 
enough, they filled it with firewood ; they 
greased the beams well, they set fire to them, 
and then retired to a safe distance to see 
what happened. When the great wall 
crashed down, the soldiers swarmed over it 
to beat down the resistance of the garrison. 
If ever you go to Abergavenny Castle, in 
the Vale of Usk, look at the cleft in the 
rock along which the daring besiegers once 
climbed. And if you go to the Vale of 
Towy, and see Dryslwyn Castle, remember 
that the wall once came down before the 
miners expected, and that many men were 
crushed. 

In order to prevent mining, many changes 
were made. Moats were dug round the 
castle, and filled with water. Brattices were 
made along the top of the towers, galleries 
through the floor of which the defenders 
could pour boiling pitch on the besiegers. 
The walls were built at such angles that a 
window, with archers posted behind it, could 
command each wall. Stronger towers were 
built — round towers with a coping at each 
storey, solid as a rock, which would crack 
and lean without falling ; there is a leaning 
tower at Caerphilly Castle. One other way 
I must mention — the child or the wife of the 



CASTLE AND LONG-BOW 63 

castellan would be brought before the walls, 
and hanged before his eyes unless he opened 
the gates. 

The newer or Edwardian castles, those of 
the reigns of Henry III. and Edward I., are 
concentric — that is, there are several castles 
in one ; so that the besiegers, when they had 
taken one castle, found themselves face to 
face with another, still stronger, perhaps, in- 
side it. Of these castles, the most elaborate 
is the castle of Caerphilly, built by Gilbert 
de Clare, the Red Earl of Gloucester who 
helped Edward in the Welsh wars. And it 
was by means of these magnificent concentric 
castles — Conway, Beaumaris, Carnarvon, 
and Harlech — that Edward hoped to keep 
Wales. 

There are many kinds of bows. In war 
two were used — the cross-bow and the long- 
bow. The cross-bow was meant at first for 
the defence of towns, like Genoa or the 
towns of Castile. So strength was more 
important than lightness, and the archer had 
time to take aim. It was a bow on a cross 
piece of wood, along which the string was 
drawn back peg after peg by mechanism. 
The bow was then held to the breast, and 
the arrow let off. It was clumsy, heavy, and 
expensive. 



64 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

The long-bow was only one piece of sinewy 
yew, and a string. It was used at first for 
the chase, and the archer had to take instant 
aim. It was drawn to the ear, and it was a 
most deadly weapon when a strong arm had 
been trained to draw it. Its arrow could 
pick off a soldier at the top of the highest 
castle ; it could pierce through an oak door 
three fingers thick; it could pin a mail-clad 
knight to his horse. It was this peasant 
weapon that brought the mailed knight down 
in battle. 

The home of the long-bow is the country 
between the Severn and the Wye. It was 
famous before, but it was first used with 
effect in the last Welsh wars. It was used 
to break the lines of the Snowdon lances 
and pikes, so that the mail-clad cavalry might 
dash in. But later on, the same bows were 
used to bring the nobles of France down. 
From the Welsh war on, archers and infantry 
became important ; battles ceased to be what 
they had been so long — the shock of mail- 
clad knights meeting each other at full 
charge. 

The long-bow made noble and peasant 
equal on the field of battle. The revolution 
was made complete later on by gunpowder. 



THE RISE OF THE PEASANT 6$ 

XIV 

THE RISE OF THE PEASANT 

I have told you much about princes and 
soldiers, but very little about the lowly 
life of peasants, and the trade of towns. 

The conquest of Wales, by Norman baron 
and English king, tended to raise the serf 
to the level of the freeman. The chief 
causes of the rise of the serf were the 
following : 

i. The ignorance of the English officials. 
The Norman baron very often paid close 
attention to the privileges of the classes 
he ruled, and the Welsh freeman retained 
his superiority. But the English officials — 
and Edward II. found that they were far 
too numerous in Wales — often refused to 
distinguish between a Welshman who was 
an innate freeman and a Welshman who 
lived on a serf maenol. Their aim was to 
make them all pay the same tax. 

2. The fall in the value of money. At 
the time of the Norman Conquest, silver 
coins were rare, and their value high. But, 
in exchange for cloth and wool, of arrows 

E 



66 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

and spears, of mountain ponies and cattle, 
coins came in great numbers, and it was 
easier for the serf to earn them. That is, 
the value of coins became less. 

This was a great boon to all who were 
bound to pay fixed sums — the freeman who 
paid to the king the dues he used to pay 
to his prince, the serf who paid to his lord 
a sum of money instead of service. All 
ancient servitude, political and economic, 
was commuted for money ; as the money 
became easier to get, the serf became the 
more free. 

3. The rise of towns and the growth of 
commerce. We must not, however, think 
of commerce as if it had been first brought 
by the Normans. There had been roads 
and coins in Roman times. The Danes 
had been traders, probably, before they 
became pirates and invaders. Timber, mill- 
stones, cattle, coarse cloth, and arrow-heads 
crossed the Severn eastwards before the 
Normans saw it ; and corn was carried 
westward. There were close relations, 
political and commercial, between Wales 
and Ireland from very early times. 

But the Norman and English Conquests 
revived and quickened trade. Towns rose, 
regular markets were established, and the 



THE RISE OF THE PEASANT 67 

barons who took tolls protected the merchants 
who paid them. Every baron had a castle, 
every castle needed a walled town, and a 
town cannot live except by trade. In the 
town the baron did not ask a Welshman 
whether he had been free or serf; the 
townsmen were strangers, and they welcomed 
the serf who came to work. 

4. The monk and the friar. The bard was 
a freeman born, a skilled weaver of courteous 
phrases, not a churlish taeog. The monk 
or friar might be a serf. They worked like 
serfs, and ennobled labour. The Church 
condemned serfdom, and we find chapters 
giving their serfs freedom. 

5. The Scotch and French wars of the 
English kings gave employment to hosts 
of bowmen and of men-at-arms, and to the 
numerous attendants required to look after 
the horses by means of which the army 
moved. The greater use of infantry after 
the reign of Edward I. caused a greater 
demand for the peasant ; and the use of the 
cheap long-bow gave him a value in war. 
There were five thousand Welsh archers 
and spearmen on the field of Cressy. In 
these and other ways the serf was becoming 
free. 

You would expect a gradual, almost un- 



68 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

conscious struggle, between the serf and his 
lord for political power. The struggle came, 
but it was conscious and very fierce. It 
was brought about by a terrible pestilence, 
known as the Black Death. This plague 
came slowly and steadily from the East ; in 
1348 it reached Bristol, and it probably 
swept away one half of the people of the 
towns of Wales. It was not the towns alone 
that it visited ; it came to the mountain glens 
as well. It was a most deadly disease. It 
killed, for one thing, because people believed 
that they would die. They saw the dark 
spots on the skin before they became feverish ; 
they recognised the black mark of the Death, 
and they gave themselves up for lost. 

Labourers became very scarce. They 
claimed higher wages. The lords tried to 
drag them back into serfdom ; they tried to 
force them by law to take the old wage. 
On both sides of the Severn the labourers 
took arms, and waged war against their lords. 
The peasant war in England is called the 
Peasant Revolt ; the peasant war in Wales 
is sometimes called the revolt of Owen 
Glendower. 

A change came over the rebellions in 
Wales. At first, the rebellions were those 
of Llywelyns country ; the allies who had 



THE RISE OF THE PEASANT 69 

deserted him, and then turned against 
Edward, like Rees ap Meredith ; or his 
own followers, like Madoc, who said he 
was his son ; or men he had protected, like 
Maelgwn Vychan in Pembroke. Later on, 
under Edward II. and Edward III., the 
rebellions were against the march lords, 
and the king was looked upon as a pro- 
tector — such as the rebellion of Llyweiyn 
Bren against the Clares and Mortimers in 
Glamorgan in 13 16. But the wilder spirits 
went to the French wars, and fought for 
both sides. With the assassination of Owen 
of Wales in 1378, the last of Llywelyn's near 
relatives to dream of restoring the inde- 
pendence of Wales, the rebellions against 
the King of England came to an end. 

When they broke out again, it was not in 
Snowdon or Ceredigion ; the old dominions 
of Llyweiyn were almost unwilling to rise. 
The new revolts were in the march lands, 
and especially in the towns. 



7o A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 



XV 

OWEN GLENDOWER 

The English baron in Wales tried to add to 
his possessions by encroaching on the lands 
of the Welsh freemen. His estate always 
remained the same, because it all went to 
the eldest son, according to what is called 
primogeniture ; their lands, on the other 
hand, were divided between the sons, 
according to what is called gavelkind. He 
also, by laws they did not understand, took 
the waste land — forest and mountain. As 
one man can more easily watch his interest 
than many, the baron succeeded ; but the 
freemen felt that they were being robbed. 

The tenants of the barons were restless 
and rebellious ; they said they were free, 
that they would not work as serfs, that 
they would not bring food rents, but that 
they would pay a fixed rent for every acre 
they held. 

At Ruthin, in the Vale of Clwyd, there 
was a baron called Lord Grey ; and in the 
valley of the Dee there was a Welsh squire 



OWEN GLENDOWER 7t 

called Owen Glendower. Their lands met, 
and Grey took part of Owen's sheep walk. 
Owen had been a law student at West- 
minster, and he had served Henry of 
Lancaster. In 1399 Richard II. had been 
dethroned, and the barons had made Henry 
of Lancaster king as Henry IV. Owen saw, 
however, that the king was too weak to curb 
his lawless barons, and in 1400 he attacked 
Lord Grey, and burnt Ruthin. 

The rebellion that had long been smoulder- 
ing burst into a flame all over the country. 
Owen was at once welcomed by the bard, 
the friar, and the peasant. The bard hailed 
his star as that of the heir of the princes, 
who had come to deliver his country. The 
friar welcomed him as the friend of the poor 
and of learning ; and unruly students from 
Oxford, then the centre of a great intellectual 
awakening, flocked home to march under his 
banner. The peasant welcomed him as his 
protector against the steward of his lord. 
The main strength of the movement was 
the peasant revolt; and Welsh poets, like 
the English ones, sang the praises of the 
ploughman and of the plough. 

Owen's success was most rapid, so rapid 
that it was put down to magic. In four 
years the whole of Wales recognised him as 



72 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

its prince. Henry IV. and Prince Henry 
came to Wales, made rapid marches and 
retook castles, punished the friars of Llan 
Vaes and the monks of Strata Florida. 
But their victories led to nothing, and the 
storms fought against them. Owen's victories 
were used to the full — that of the Vyrnwy 
was followed by an agreement with Grey 
of Ruthin, that of Bryn Glas by an alliance 
with the Mortimers. His marches were 
nearly all triumphant ; he was welcomed 
along the whole line of the marches by the 
peasants to the furthest corners of Gwent. 

Owen was wise enough to see that no 
abiding power can be based on a popular 
rising. He tried to establish a government 
that the King of England could not over- 
throw. He had three institutions in mind — 
an independent Wales, governed by him as 
Prince in a Parliament of representatives of 
the commotes ; an independent Welsh Church, 
with an Archbishop of St David's at its 
head ; and an independent system of learning 
and civilisation, guided by two Universities, 
one in North Wales and one in South Wales. 

The new Wales was to be safeguarded 
by four alliances — with the English barons, 
with the Pope, with Scotland, and with 
France. He failed to save the Percies 



OWEN GLENDOWER 73 

from their defeat at Shrewsbury in 1403 ; 
but he based all his plans on an alliance 
with the Mortimers, the enemies of Lancaster 
and the Percies. The head of the Mortimer 
family had died in Ireland in 1398, and had 
left four young children. They were the 
real heirs to the crown, and Owen meant to 
win their throne for them. Their uncle, 
Edmund Mortimer, married Glendower's 
daughter. But the young Earl of March, 
the elder of the Mortimer boys, had no 
ambition, and a plot to bring him and his 
brother to Owen failed. 

The Papacy had always proved to be a 
broken reed for Welsh princes ; but Owen's 
alliance with Peter de Luna, the anti-Pope 
Benedict XIII., gave a certain amount of 
prestige to his title. The alliance with 
Scotland, based on common kinship, could 
bring him no help at that time : because it 
was torn between two factions during the 
reign of the weak Robert III.; and the 
next king, the poet James I., was captured 
at sea and put into an English prison. 

The French alliance was much more 
promising ; it would give what Owen wanted 
most — siege engines, a fleet, and an army 
of trained soldiers. Charles VI. of France, 
the father-in-law of the deposed Richard, 



74 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

refused to make peace with the usurper 
Henry ; his fleet protected the Welsh coast, 
and in 1405 a French army of 2,800 men 
landed at Milford. 

Owen struggled on, with waning power, 
until his death in 14 15. He came too soon 
for success, while the power of the House of 
Lancaster was increasing. 

Of all figures in the history of Wales, that 
of Owen Glendower is the most striking and 
the most popular. The place of his grave is 
unknown, his lineage and the date of his 
death a matter of conjecture ; there is much 
mystery about even his most brilliant years. 
But his majestic figure, his wisdom, and his 
ideals remained in the memory of his country. 
His ghost wandered, it was said, around 
Valle Crucis. His spirit, more than that of 
any hero of the past, seems to follow his 
people on their onward march. This is not 
on account of his political ideals, but because 
he was the champion of the peasant and of 
education. 



THE WARS OF THE ROSES 75 

XVI 

THE WARS OF THE ROSES 

The reign of Henry V. was a reign of 
brilliant victories in France, and the reign 
of Henry VI. one of disastrous defeats. 
During both reigns the lords were becoming 
more powerful in Wales as well as in England. 
The hold of the king over them became 
weaker every year ; they packed the Parlia- 
ment, they appointed the Council, they over- 
awed the law courts. If a man wanted 
security, he must wear the badge of some 
lord, and fight for him when called 
upon to do so. In the marches of Wales 
there were more than a hundred lords 
holding castle and court ; and it was easy 
for a robber or a murderer to escape from 
one lordship to the other, or even to find 
a welcome and protection. In Wales and 
in the marches the lords preyed upon their 
weaker neighbours, and the country became 
full of private war. 

The selfish families, all fighting for more 
land and more power, gradually formed them- 
selves into two parties — the parties of the Red 



76 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

Rose and of the White Rose. The leading 
family in the Red Rose party was that of 
Lancaster, represented by the saintly King 
Henry VI.; the leading family in the 
White Rose party was that of York. In 
the Wars of the Roses, York and Lancaster 
fought over the crown, and those who 
supported them over a castle or an estate. 

Wales was divided. The west was for 
Lancaster, from Pembroke to Harlech, and 
from Harlech to Anglesey. The east was 
for York, from Cardiff and Raglan to 
Wigmore, and from Wigmore to Chirk. 
Lancaster held estates in Wales and on the 
border — the castles of Hereford, Skenfrith, 
Ogmore, and Kidwelly being centres of 
strength and wealth. York's chief country 
was the march of Wales, with Ludlow as 
its centre. The Welsh barons took sides 
according to their interests. Jasper Tudor, 
Earl of Pembroke, held the west for his half- 
brother, the king. Sir William Herbert, who 
was very powerful in the country south of 
the Mortimers, took the side of his power- 
ful neighbour. Others wavered, especially 
Grey of Ruthin and the Stanleys in North 
Wales. 

One battle was fought between the Welsh 
Yorkists and the Welsh Lancastrians. This 



THE WARS OF THE ROSES 77 

was the battle of Mortimer's Cross, near 
Wigmore, in February 1461. The victor 
was the young Duke of York, who was 
crowned king as Edward IV. later in the 
year. An old man, Owen Tudor, the 
father of Jasper Tudor, and the grandfather 
of the boy who was "to rule after them 
all" as Henry VII., was taken prisoner. 
They took him to Hereford, and there 
they cut his head off and set it on the 
market cross. The battles of the Wars of 
the Roses were very cruel ones ; the noble 
prisoners that had been taken, even children 
of tender age, were murdered in cold blood 
on the evening of the battle. " By God's 
blood," said one, as he killed a child, "thy 
father slew mine, and so will I do thee." 

The Welsh barons led their men to nearly 
all the important battles. North Wales 
archers, wearing the three feathers of the 
Prince of Wales, fought for Lancaster in 
the snow at the great defeat of Towton on 
the Palm Sunday of 1461 ; the archers of 
Gwent, led by Herbert, fought vainly for 
York at the battle of Edgecote, in the 
summer of 1469. And the Welsh waverer 
and traitor was seen in battle also — Grey of 
Ruthin led the van for Lancaster at the 
battle of Northampton in 1460, and caused 



78 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

the battle to be lost by deserting to York 
at the beginning of the fighting. In Wales 
itself, also, the war was fought bitterly ; 
and the stubborn defence of Harlech for 
the Lancastrians became famous through 
the whole country. The last battle fought 
between Lancaster and York was the 
battle of Tewkesbury, in May 147 1, and 
Lancaster lost it ; the Prince of Wales, 
the king's only son, was killed ; and his 
heroic mother, Margaret of Anjou, gave 
the struggle up. A young Welsh noble — 
Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond — became 
the Lancastrian heir. The fortunes of his 
house were hopeless, however ; and his 
uncle, Jasper, sent him in safety to Brittany. 

The Yorkist kings, Edward IV. and 
Richard III., in spite of cruelty and murder, 
ruled well. They broke the power of the 
barons, and they made the people rich — 
by maintaining peace, by repressing piracy, 
by protecting the woollen industry of the 
towns. 

In Wales their rule was for peace and 
order. They made a Court for Wales at 
Ludlow, the home of their race. From 
Ludlow they began to force the barons to 
do justice and to obey the king. It seemed 
as if the rule of the Yorkists was to be a 



THE WARS OF THE ROSES 79 

long one, for they were very popular in 
London and the towns. 

But the nobles were not willing to see 
their power taken from them day by day. 
Jasper Tudor appealed to the loyalty of the 
Welsh, and the men of West Wales wanted 
a king of their own blood ; for the laws 
had been made unjust to them ever since 
the time of Owen Glendower. 

Many attempts were made, and they 
failed. But at last, on August 7, 1485, the 
fugitive Earl of Richmond came to Mil- 
ford Haven. He marched on to the valley 
of the Teivy, and he was joined by Sir 
Rees ap Thomas, and an army of South 
Wales men ; he journeyed on through the 
valley of the Severn, and the North Wales 
men joined him ; English nobles joined him 
as he marched by Shrewsbury, Stafford, 
Lichfield, and Tamworth. Richard's army 
was also on the march. At Bosworth, 
August 22, 1485, the two armies met in 
the & last battle of the Wars of the Roses. 
Richard fought fiercely, wearing his crown ; 
and when he was defeated and killed, the 
crown was placed on Henry's head. 

The people of England did not care who 
ruled, Richard or Henry, as long as he kept 
order, for they were very tired of civil war. 



So A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

But the people of Wales welcomed Henry 
as a Welshman who would rule them 
kindly and justly. 



XVII 
TUDOR ORDER 



The Tudors — Henry VII., his son, Henry 
VIII., and his three grandchildren, Edward 
VI. and Mary and Elizabeth — ruled England 
and Wales from 1485 to 1603. Under them 
the people became united, law - abiding, 
patriotic, and prosperous. The Tudor period 
is justly regarded as the most glorious in 
British history, with its great statesmen, its 
great adventurers, and its great poets. 

The Tudors were loyally supported by 
Wales, by the military strength of men 
like Sir Rees ap Thomas or the Earl of 
Pembroke, and by the diplomatic skill of 
the Cecils. Under their rule — hard and 
unmerciful, but just and efficient — the law 
became strong enough to crush the mightiest 
and to shield the weakest. Welshmen found 
that, even under their own sovereigns, their 
ancient language was regarded as a hindrance 



TUDOR ORDER 81 

and their patriotism as a possible source of 
trouble ; but they obtained the privileges of 
an equal race, and they were pleased to 
regard themselves as a dominant one. 

They obtained equal political privileges. 
The laws which denied them residence in 
the garrison towns in Wales, or the holding 
of land in England, came to an end. The 
whole of the country, shire ground and march 
ground, was divided into one system of 
shires and given representation in Parlia- 
ment,, by the Act of Union of 1535. It 
is called an Act of Union because, by it, 
Wales and England were united on equal 
terms. 

Anglesey, Carnarvon, Merioneth, Flint, 
Cardigan, and Carmarthen had been shires 
since 1284 ; and small portions of Glamorgan 
and Pembroke had been governed like 
shires, so that some Tudor writers call 
them counties. The chief difference be- 
tween a shire and a lordship is that the 
king's writ runs to the shire, but not to 
the lordship. The king administers the 
law in the shire, through the sheriff; the 
lord administers the law in the lordship 
through his own officials. 

In 1535 the marches of Wales were turned 
into shire ground. The bulk of them went 

F 



82 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

to make seven new shires — Pembroke, 
Glamorgan, Monmouth, Brecon, Radnor, 
Montgomery, and Denbigh. The others 
were added to the older English and Welsh 
counties. Of these, those added to Shrop- 
shire and Herefordshire and Gloucestershire 
became part of England. Monmouth also 
was declared to be an English shire, for 
judicial purposes ; but it has remained 
sturdily Welsh, and now it is practically 
regarded by Parliament as part of Wales. 
The whole country was now governed in 
the same way, and Wales was represented, 
like England, in Parliament. No attempt 
had been made to do this before, except 
by the first English Prince of Wales, the 
weak and unfortunate Edward II. 

Of even greater value than political equality 
was the new reign of law. The Tudors used 
the Star Chamber, the Court of Wales, and 
the Great Sessions of Wales, to make all 
equal before the law. To the Star Chamber 
they summoned a noble who was still too 
powerful for the court of law. 

But it was the Court of Wales that did 
most work. It was held at Ludlow. It had 
very able presidents, men like Bishop Lee, 
the Earl of Pembroke, and Sir Henry 
Sidney. Bishop Lee struck terror into the 



TUDOR ORDER 83 

whole Welsh march, between 1534 and 1543. 
Before his time a lord would keep murderers 
and robbers at his castle, protect them, and 
perhaps share their spoil. But no man could 
keep a felon out of the reach of Bishop 
Rowland Lee. If he could not get them 
alive he got their dead bodies ; and you 
might have seen processions of men carry- 
ing sacks on ponies — they were dead men 
who were to swing on Ludlow gibbets. But, 
severe as Lee was, the peasant was glad that 
he could go to the Court at Ludlow instead 
of going to the court of a march lord, as 
he had to do before 1535. The shire had 
been much better governed than the lord- 
ship. When the lordship of Mawddwy was 
added to the shire of Merioneth in 1535, 
the officers of the shire found that it was a 
nest of brigands and outlaws. 

In the more peaceful and humane days of 
Queen Elizabeth, Sir Henry Sidney became 
President of the Court of Wales. He was 
one of the best men of the day ; and he was 
proud of ruling Wales and the border 
counties, "a third part of this realm," 
because his high office made him able "to 
do good every day." 

Besides the Court of Wales for the whole 
country, a court of justice was held in each 



84 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

of four groups of shires ; and these courts 
were called the Great Sessions of Wales. 
So, though the law was the same for every- 
body, Wales had a separate system to itself, 
partly because there was so much to do, and 
partly because the central courts in London 
were so far away. Much was also done to 
get wise and learned justices of the peace, 
and fair juries. 

By the end of the reign of Elizabeth, the 
last of the Tudors, one may say that Wales 
rejoiced in the following : 

i. There was no hatred between England 
and Wales ; the Welsh gentry served the 
Queen on land and sea, and the people were 
more happy and contented than they had 
been since the time of Llywelyn. 

2. There was no danger of private war 
between lords, to which the peasant might 
be summoned. The brigands which infested 
parts of the country had been cleared away. 

3. The law of land had been fixed. It 
was determined that land was to go to the 
eldest son, according to the English fashion. 
All the land became the property of some 
landlord, and it was decided who was a 
landowner, and who was not. The Welsh 
freemen were held to own their land ; the 
Welsh serfs, the descendants of an old 



THE REFORMATION 8$ 

conquered race, sometimes became owners 
and sometimes tenants. They all thought 
that Henry VII., the Welsh victor of 
Bosworth, had set them free. 

4. The Tudors trusted their people, and 
called upon them to govern and to administer 
justice themselves. The squires were to be 
justices, the freemen were to be jurors ; the 
shire was to look after the militia, and the 
parish after the poor. 



XVIII 

THE REFORMATION 

The Reformation in England was, to begin 
with, a purely political movement. Henry 
VIII. wished to rule his people in his own 
way, in religion as well as in politics ; and, 
eventually, he became Supreme Head of the 
Church as well as the king of the country. 
His new power brought changes. It was 
necessary to reform the Church, and the 
wealth of the monasteries tempted him to 
do it. There was a new spirit of enquiry, 
and the King was led on by that spirit, 
with dilatory and hesitating steps, to examine 



86 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

old creeds. The religious fervour of the 
Reformation had caught the people ; and 
the King stood still, if he did not turn back. 

But his ministers had no misgivings. 
Thomas Cromwell tried to hurry the Refor- 
mation on — the monasteries were dissolved, 
the Bible was translated, and the sway of 
Rome was disowned. The king appointed 
the bishops, decided church cases, and even 
determined what the creed of his country 
was to be. Somerset, in the reign of 
Edward VI., made the movement a doctrinal 
one, and forced it on with equal vigour. 

Wales looked on, with indifference and 
apathy at first, and then with murmurs. 
The movement had no attraction : it had 
many causes of offence. In England the 
political movement became a patriotic, 
an intellectual, and a religious movement ; 
and it succeeded. In Ireland, also, it 
was political, but it could not appeal to 
patriotism, because it was an English 
movement ; and it failed. In Wales, it 
was neither welcomed nor opposed ; it was 
simply tolerated, and with a bad grace. 

For one thing, it brought English instead 
of Latin into public worship. Latin, the old 
language of prayer and even of sermon, was 
venerated, though not understood. But 



THE REFORMATION 87 

English was not only not understood, it was 
also regarded as inferior to Welsh. The 
Tudors' dislike of various tongues was as 
strong as their dislike of various jurisdic- 
tions. Henry VIII., in giving Welshmen 
the Act of 1535, says that the tongue of 
Owen Tudor is " nothing like ne consonant 
to the natural mother-tongue used within 
this realm," and enacts that all officials in 
Wales shall speak English. And, in the 
same spirit, the Welshman was told that the 
Kingdom of Heaven was now open to him, 
but that he must seek it in English, or not 
at all. 

"Again, the reformers — men of the type of 
Bishop Barlow — despised and shocked a 
people they never understood. The sanctity 
of St David's, the theme of the best poets of 
the Middle Ages and the goal of generations 
of pilgrims, was described by its Protestant 
bishop — who unroofed the palace in order to 
get the lead — as a desolate angle frequented 
only by vagabond pilgrims. A Welshman 
is not appealed to by what is an insult to his 
country and a shock to his religion at the 
same time. The relics were ruthlessly swept 
away ; they were taken possession of by the 
agents of Cromwell and destroyed, or sent 
to London. The images carried in the 



88 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

village processions were lost — the images 
that could keep the superstitious Welshman 
from hell, or even bring him back from it, or 
heal his diseases, or keep his cattle from the 
murrain, and his crops from blight. I only 
know of one of those relics that can still 
be seen. It is the healing cup of Nant Eos, 
a mere fragment of wood. The people's 
faith in the relics can be estimated from the 
fact that the cup has been used within the 
last century. 

Again, the monasteries were dissolved. 
The wealth of the monasteries, their meadows 
and barns and sheep-runs and fish ponds, 
were coveted by the rich ; .the poor thought 
of them as sources of alms. The monks 
were good landlords ; and they gave freely, 
not only the comforts of religion, but of their 
medicinal herbs and stores of food. The 
Welsh monasteries were not so rich as those 
of England, and they were all dissolved 
among the lesser monasteries — those with 
an income under ^200 a year. But though 
none of them were very rich, they nearly all 
had almost ^200 a year. Their loss affected 
the whole country, as each part of Wales 
had one or two of them — Tintern, Margam, 
Neath, and Whitland in the south ; Strata 
Florida, Cwm Hir, Ystrad Marchell, and the 



THE REFORMATION 89 

Vanner in central Wales ; and Basingwerk 
and Maenan in the north. 

The Reformation brought the poorer 
classes in Wales, not only insults to their 
national and religious feelings, but material 
loss. It appealed only to the English 
bishops who had adopted the new Protestant 
tenets, and to the Welsh and English land- 
owners who had lost their reverence for 
relics, and had learnt to hunger for land. 

The movement was a severe strain on 
the loyalty of the Welshman to the Tudors, 
but he had learnt to look to the king for 
guidance, and he suffered in silence. Mary 
was welcomed, and no Welsh blood was 
shed for the Protestant faith. The passive 
resistance to the Reformation might have 
broken out into a rebellion if a leader had 
come. 

In Elizabeth's reign two attempts were 
made to disturb the religious settlement. 
One was made by the Jesuits — the wonderful 
society established to check the Reformation 
movement and to lead a reaction against it. 
In 1583 John Bennett came to North Wales ; 
in 1595 Robert Jones came to Raglan; and 
several Welsh Jesuits suffered martyrdom. 
The other attempt was that of John Penry, 
who wished to appeal to the intellect of the 



90 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

people by means of the pulpit and the print- 
ing press. The apostle of the new creed 
was crushed, like those who wished to revive 
the old ; he was put to death as a traitor 
in 1593, after a short life of importunate 
pleading that he might preach the Gospel in 
Wales. 

Before the end of the reign of Elizabeth, 
however, the Welsh language was recognised. 
The last school founded, that of Ruthin in 
1595, was to have a master who could teach 
and preach in Welsh. And in 1588 there 
had appeared, by the help of Archbishop 
Whitgift, the Welsh Bible of William 
Morgan. It was the appearance of this 
Bible that aroused the first real welcome to 
the Reformation. But the Reformation that 
gave England a Spenser and a Shakespeare 
aroused no new life in Wales, not a single 
hymn or a single prayer. 



XIX 

THE CIVIL WAR 

After the Tudors came the Stuarts. The 
Tudors did what their people wanted ; the 



THE CIVIL WAR 91 

king and the people, between them, crushed 
the nobles. The Stuarts did what they 
thought right, and they did not try to please 
the people. Under the Tudors, there was 
harmony between Crown and Parliament ; 
and Elizabeth left a prosperous people with 
strong views about their rights and their 
religion. But James I., and especially his 
son Charles I., tried to change law and 
religion. From the Tudor period of unity, 
then, we come to the Stuart period of 
strife. 

From 1603 t0 x ^4 2 tne struggle went on 
in Parliament. The Welsh Members nearly 
all supported the king, and the Welsh people 
followed the Welsh gentry in strong loyalty. 
The most famous Welshman of the period 
was John Williams, who became Archbishop 
of York and Lord Keeper. He was a wise 
man ; he saw that both sides were a little in 
the wrong ; and if any one could have kept 
the peace between them, he could have done 
it. But the king did not quite trust him, 
and the Parliament almost despised him ; 
and this happens often to wise men who 
get between two angry parties. 

From 1642 to 1646, the First Civil War 
was waged. This was a war between the 
king and the Parliament over taxation, 



92 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

militia, and religion. The south-east, and 
London especially, were for Parliament ; the 
wilder parts, especially Wales, were for the 
king. The only important part of Wales 
that declared for Parliament was the southern 
part of Pembrokeshire, which had been 
English ever since the reign of Henry II. 
Wales was important to the king for two 
reasons. For one thing, it could give him 
an army, and he came, time after time, to 
get a new one. When he unfurled his 
flag and began the war at Nottingham in 
1642, he came to Shrewsbury, and there five 
thousand Welshmen joined him. With 
these and others he marched against 
London, fighting the battle of Edgehill on 
the way. While the king made many 
attempts to get London until 1644, and 
while the New Model army attacked him 
between 1645 and 1647, the Welsh fought 
in nearly all his battles, their infantry suffer- 
ing heavily in the two greatest battles, 
Marston Moor and Naseby. The war went 
on in Wales itself also — Rupert and Gerard 
beingthe chief Royalist leaders, and Middleton 
and Michael Jones being the chief Parlia- 
mentary ones. No great battles were fought, 
but there were several skirmishes, and much 
taking and retaking of castles and towns. 



THE CIVIL WAR 93 

Wales was important to the king, also, 
because it commanded the two ways to 
Ireland. The King thought, almost to the 
last, that an Irish army would save him. 
Welsh garrisons held the two ports for 
Ireland, Chester and Bristol. Bristol was 
stormed by a great midnight assault, and 
Chester was forced to yield. In March 
1647 Harlech yielded, and the war came 
to an end. By that time the king was a 
prisoner in the hands of the army. 

The Second Civil War, in 1648 and 1649, 
was a struggle between the two sections of 
the victorious army. The Parliament wished 
to establish one religion, the army said that 
every man must be allowed to worship God 
as he liked. One was called the Presbyterian 
ideal, the other the Independent. The army 
was led by Cromwell, and Parliament was 
overawed. Then the Presbyterian parts 
rose in revolt — Kent, Pembrokeshire, and 
the lowlands of Scotland. The New Model 
army marched against the Welsh, in order 
to break the connection between the northern 
and southern Presbyterians. The Welsh 
generals were Laugharne, Poyer, and Powell, 
who had all fought for Parliament in the 
first war. They were defeated at St Fagans, 
near Cardiff, and then driven into Pembroke. 



94 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

They determined to hold out to the last 
within its walls. Cromwell besieged them, 
and the great feature of the war was the 
siege of Pembroke. Walls and castles like 
those of Pembroke had become useless 
because of gunpowder. But Cromwell could 
not at once bring his guns so far. His 
difficulties were increasing daily : the Parlia- 
ment was trying to come to terms with the 
king, all Wales around him was disaffected, 
the Scotch had crossed the border and were 
marching on London. After many weeks of 
assaults and desperate defence, the guns 
came and the old walls were battered down. 
Pembroke Castle, whose great round tower 
still stands, had protected William Marshall 
against Llywelyn and had enabled an im- 
portant district to remain a " little England 
beyond Wales," was the last mediaeval castle 
to take an important part in war. The 
Scotch were soon defeated at the battle of 
Preston, and the king was brought to trial 
and put to death, the death-warrant being 
signed by two Welshmen — John Jones of 
Merioneth and Thomas Wogan of Cardigan. 
The date of Charles' execution is January 20, 
1649. 

The Commonwealth was established im- 
mediately, and Wales was looked upon with 



THE CIVIL WAR 95 

much distrust — the Presbyterian parts and 
the Royalist parts — by the new Government. 
It was represented in the English Parlia- 
ments, it is true, but its representatives were 
often English, and practically appointed by 
the Government. When the country was 
put under the military dictatorship of the 
major-generals, Harrison was sent to rule 
Wales. 

Honest attempts were made to give it 
an efficient clergy ; but the zeal of Vavasour 
Powel aroused much opposition. Wales 
either clung tenaciously to its old religion ; 
or, if it changed it, the changes were 
extreme. Though the country generally 
returned to its old life and thought at the 
Restoration in 1660, much of the new life 
of the Commonwealth remained : congrega- 
tions of Independents still met; Quaker 
ideals survived all persecution ; and even 
the mysticism of Morgan Lloyd permeated 
the slowly awakening thought of the peasants 
whom, in his dreams, he saw welcoming the 
second advent of Christ. 



96 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 



XX 

THE GREAT REVOLUTION 

Except to the reader who is of a legal or 
antiquarian turn of mind, the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries are the least interest- 
ing in the history of Wales — the very- 
centuries that are the most glorious and 
the most stirring in the history of England. 
The older historians stop when they come 
to the year 1284, and sometimes give a 
hasty outline of a few rebellions up to 1535. 
They then give the Welsh a glowing testi- 
monial as a law - abiding and loyal people, 
and find them too uninteresting to write 
any more about them. 

The history of Wak s does, indeed, appear 
to be nothing more than the gradual dis- 
appearance of Welsh institutions. The 
Court of Wales was restored with the king 
in 1660; but its work had been done, and 
it came to an end in 1689. The Great 
Sessions came to an end in 1830 ; and, though 
we now see that their disappearance was 
a mistake, the bill abolishing them passed 



THE GREAT REVOLUTION 97 

through Parliament without a division. 
The last difference between England and 
Wales was deleted ; and if Wales has no 
separate existence left, why should we write 
or read its history ? 

Because the two centuries of apparent 
settlement and sleep were the period of a 
silent revolution, more important, if our aim 
is to explain the living present rather than 
the dead past, than all the exciting plots 
and battles of the House of Cunedda from 
the rise of Maelgwn to the fall of the last 
Llywelyn. During these centuries, the 
history of Wales ceases to be the history of 
princes and nobles, it becomes the history of 
the people. Owen Glendower's few years 
of power were a kind of prophecy ; but 
Owen once appeared to the abbot of Valle 
Crucis, so tradition says, to declare that 
he had come before his time. We pass 
then, very gradually, from the history of a 
privileged class, speaking literary Welsh, 
with a literature famous for the wealth of 
its imagination and the artistic beauty of 
its form — we pass on to the history of a 
peasantry, rude and ignorant at first, retain- 
ing the servile traits of centuries of sub- 
jection, but gradually becoming self-reliant, 
prosperous, and thoughtful. 

G 



98 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

The real history of a nation is shown by 
its literature. Its records and its chronicles 
are but the notes and comments of various 
ages. In the period of the princes and 
nobles, you can trace the rise and decline 
of a great literature ; watch how it gathers 
strength and beauty from Cynddelw to 
Dafydd ap Gwilym, and how the strength 
begins to fail and the beauty to wane, from 
Dafydd ap Gwilym to Tudur Aled. In the 
period of the people, from Tudor times on, 
the peasants tried at first to imitate the 
poetry of the past ; then they began to 
write and think in their own way. It is 
not my aim to explain the periods of Welsh 
literature now ; I am going to do that in 
another book. But, as I have mentioned 
three typical poets in the period of the 
princes, I will also mention three poets in 
the period of the people. 

In 1579 Rees Prichard was born ; in 1 71 7, 
Williams Pant y Celyn ; in 1832, Islwyn. 
We have, in these three, writers typical of 
the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth 
centuries respectively. Rees Prichard, still 
affectionately remembered in every Welsh 
home as the " Old Vicar," wrote stanzas 
in the dialect of the Vale of Towy — rough, 
full of peasant phrases and mangled English 



THE GREAT REVOLUTION 99 

words ; and he wrote them, not in books, 
but on the memory of the people. In 
the same valley, a century later, Williams 
Pant y Celyn wrote hymns, melodious and 
inspiring, of great poetic beauty, though 
with a trace of dialect ; they were written 
and published, but they also haunted every 
ear that heard them. Beyond the Black 
Mountains, in the hills of West Monmouth, 
after another century, Islwyn wrote odes 
without a trace of dialect ; they were written 
and remained for some time in manuscript ; 
when published, they met with a welcome 
which shows clearly that Islwyn is the 
typical poet of modern Welsh thought. If 
you wish to see and realise the rise of the 
Welsh peasant, pass from the homely stanzas 
of the good Old Vicar's Welshmen s Candle 
to the poetic theology of Pant y Celyn, and 
from that to the poetic philosophy of Islwyn, 
where concentrated intensity of thought is 
expressed in a style that is, at any rate 
at its best, superior to the best work of the 
poets of the princes. 

If I were to tell you the reasons for this 
change, I would be writing, in a slightly 
different form, what I have already written 
in this book about early Welsh history. 
The fall of Llywelyn, the Black Death, 

LOFC, 



ioo A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

Owen Glendower's ideals and the Tudor 
legislation, all prepared the way. 

The long-bow and gunpowder, we have 
seen, made the peasant as important as the 
noble in war. The long-bow made the coat 
of mail useless, gunpowder made the castle 
useless — the defence of the privileges of the 
Middle Ages departed. 

Ideas of equality were advanced. They 
were looked upon at first as truths applicable 
only to a perfect and impossible condition, 
and their discoverers were ignored, if not 
hanged or burnt. But they always became 
a reality, and were victorious in the end. 
Take the truths discovered or championed 
by Welshmen. Walter Brute rediscovered 
the theory of justification by faith — that all 
men are equal in the sight of God, and that 
no lord could be responsible for them. Bishop 
Pecock advocated the doctrine of toleration 
— that reason, not persecution, should rule. 
John Penry claimed that the people had a 
right to discuss publicly the questions that 
vitally affected them. The history of the 
past shows that the apostles were con- 
demned, the life of the present shows that 
their ideas lived. 

Industry and commerce became more 
free. In Tudor times piracy was repressed, 



THE GREAT REVOLUTION 101 

the march lordships were abolished, the 
privileges of the towns ceased to fetter 
manufacture, trade with England became 
free. In Stuart times roads were made, 
the industries depending on wool revived, 
and the industries of Britain began to 
move westwards towards the iron and the 
coal. In the Hanoverian period waste 
lands were enclosed, the slate mines of the 
north and the coal pits of the south were 
opened. 

The Tudors succeeded in getting the 
upper classes to speak English, and to turn 
their backs on Welsh life. The peasant 
was left supreme : he knew not what to do 
at first, but light soon came. 

Pass through Wales, and you will see the 
life of both periods — the ruined castles and the 
ruined monasteries of the old ; the quarries 
and pits, the towns and ports, the churches 
and chapels, the schools and colleges of the 
present. 



102 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

XXI 

HOWEL HARRIS 

It is difficult to write about religion with- 
out giving offence. Religion will come into 
politics, and must come into history. It has 
given much, perhaps most, of its strength 
to modern Wales ; it has given it many, if 
not most, of its political difficulties. 

There are periods of religious calm and 
periods of religious fervour in the life of 
every nation. I do not know whether it is 
necessary, but it is certainly the fact — the 
two periods condemn each other with great 
energy. With regard to creed — the life of 
religion — you will find that the periods of 
energy tend to be Calvinistic — an intense 
belief that man is a mere instrument in 
the hands of God, working out plans he 
does not understand ; while in periods of 
rest it tends to be Arminian — a comfortable 
belief that man sees his future clearly, and 
that he can guide it as he likes. With 
regard to the Church — the body of religion 
— it is fortunate, in times of calm, if it is 
established, to keep the spirit of religion 



HOWEL HARRIS 103 

alive ; it is fortunate, in times of fervour, if 
it is free, in order that the new life may 
give it a more perfect shape. 

Now we must remember that there can 
be no calm without a little indifference, and 
that there can be no enthusiasm without a 
little intolerance. So men call each other 
fanatics and bigots and hypocrites, because 
they have not taken the trouble to realise 
that there is much variety in human char- 
acter and in the workings of the human 
mind. Perhaps it is also worth remember- 
ing that an institution is not placed at the 
mercy of a reformer, but gradually changed. 

The eighteenth century was a century of 
indifference in religion in Wales, the nine- 
teenth century was a century of enthusi- 
asm. The Church at the beginning of 
the eighteenth century, at any rate as far 
as the higher clergy were concerned, was 
apathetic to religion, and alive only to 
selfish interests. The Whig bishops were 
appointed for political reasons ; they hated 
the Tory principles of the Welsh squires, 
and they neglected and despised the Welsh 
people they had never tried to understand. 
In England, the Defoes and the Swifts of 
literature were encouraged and utilised by 
the political parties ; in Wales, where clergy- 



io4 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

men were the only writers, the Whig bishops 
distrusted them, and silenced them where 
they could, because they wrote Welsh. The 
Church did not show more misapplication of 
revenue than the State, perhaps ; but, while 
the people could not leave the State as a 
protest against corruption, they could leave 
the Church. And, during the middle of 
the eighteenth century, a great national 
awakening began. 

The trumpet blast of the awakening was 
Howel Harris. He was a Breconshire 
peasant, of strong passion which became 
sanctified by a life-long struggle, of devour- 
ing ambition which he nearly succeeded in 
taming to a life of intense service to God. 
Many bitter things have been said about 
him, but nothing more bitter than he has 
said about himself in the volumes of prayers 
and recriminations he wrote to torture his 
own soul, and to goad himself into harder 
work. The fame of his eloquence filled 
the land, and districts expected his appear- 
ance anxiously, as in old times they ex- 
pected Owen Glendower. Howel Harris 
was, however, no political agitator. He had 
an imperious will, and he wished to rule his 
brethren ; he was aggressive and military in 
spirit ; God to him was the Lord of Hosts ; 



HOWEL HARRIS 105 

he preached the gospel of peace in the 
uniform of an officer of the militia, and he 
sent many of his converts to fight abroad 
in the battles of the century. He had 
a love of organisation ; he established at 
Trevecca what was partly a religious com- 
munity, and partly a co - operative manu- 
facturing company. But, wherever he stood 
to proclaim the wrath of God, no shower 
of stones or condemnation of minister or 
justice could make those who heard him 
forget him, or believe that what he said 
was wrong. 

If I were writing for antiquarians, and not 
for those who read history in order to see 
why things are now as they are, I would 
write details — important and instructive — 
about the Church of the eighteenth century, 
and about the congregations of Dissenters 
which the seventeenth century handed over 
to the eighteenth to persecute and despise. 
The Independents and Baptists sturdily main- 
tained their principles of religious liberty, but 
they found the century a stiff-necked one, 
and their congregations were content with 
merely existing. The Quakers maintained 
that war was wrong while Britain passed 
through war fever after war fever — the 
Seven Years' War and the wars against 



106 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

Napoleon. Howel Harris' voice might 
have been a voice crying in the wilderness, 
if it had not been for the spiritual life of 
the existing congregations, conformist and 
dissenting. Modern ideas in Wales have 
been profoundly affected by the Quakers, 
and especially in districts from which, as a 
sect, they have long passed away. 

The voice of Howel Harris called all 
these to a new life ; and it is about that 
new life, in the variety given it by all the 
different actors in it, that I want you to 
think now. It made preaching necessary, 
for one thing ; and it was followed by a 
century of great pulpit oratory. It pro- 
foundly affected literature. It gave Wales, 
to begin with, a hymn literature that no 
country in the world has surpassed. The 
contrast between the Reformation and the 
Revival is very striking — one gave the 
people a Church government established by 
law and a literature of translations, the 
other gave it institutions of its own making 
and original living thought. The Revival 
gave literature in every branch a new 
strength and greater wealth. 

It created a demand for education. Griffith 
Jones of Llanddowror established a system 
of circulating schools, the teachers moving 



THE REFORM ACTS 107 

from place to place as a room was offered 
them — sometimes a church and sometimes 
a barn. Charles of Bala established a 
system of Sunday Schools, and the whole 
nation gradually joined it. The Press 
became active, newspapers appeared. It 
became quite clear that a new life throbbed 
in the land. 



XXII 

THE REFORM ACTS 

The new life brought an inevitable demand 
for a share in the government of the country, 
and this brought the old order and the 
new face to face. The political power was 
entirely in the hands of the squires, alienated 
from the peasants in many cases by a 
difference of language, and in most cases 
by a difference of religion. 

The Act of 1535 had, as we have seen, 
given Wales a representation in Parliament. 
Each shire had one member only ; except 
Monmouth, which had two. Each shire 
town had one member, except that of 
Merioneth ; and Haverfordwest was given 



108 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

a member. The county franchise was the 
forty shilling freehold ; it therefore excluded 
not only those who had no connection with 
the land, but the copyholder — who was 
really a landowner, but whose tenure was 
regarded as base, on account of his villein 
origin. This copyholder was undoubtedly 
the descendant of the Welsh serf of mediaeval 
times. 

The first Reform Act, that of 1832, was 
won for the great manufacturing towns of 
England, but Wales benefited by it. It 
extended the franchise to the copyholder, 
and to the farmer paying ^50 rent, in the 
counties ; it gave the towns a uniform £10 
household franchise. It also brought many 
of the towns into the system of representa- 
tion. It raised the number of members 
from twenty-seven to thirty-two ; the agri- 
cultural districts getting two, and the mining 
districts two. 

The slight change in representation is a 
recognition of the growing industries of the 
country, especially in the coal and iron 
districts. The coal of the great coalfield 
of South Wales had been worked as far 
back as Norman times ; but it was in the 
nineteenth century that the coal and iron 
industries of South Wales, and the coal 



PARLIAMENTARY REFORM IN WALES 



Glamorgan 



By the Act of 1535. 
1 County Member 
1 Member for Cardiff 



Monmouth . . . 
Carmarthen . . 

Pembroke . . . 



Cardiganshire . 



Breconshire . . 
Radnorshire . . 



Montgomeryshire 



Merionethshire . 
Denbighshire . . 



Flintshire 



Carnarvonshire 



Anglesey . . 



2 County Members . . , 
1 Member for Monmouth . 
1 County Member . . . 
1 Member for Carmarthen 

1 County Member . . , 
1 Member for Pembroke . 

1 Member for Haverford- 
west 



i County Member . . 
1 Member for Cardigan 



1 County Member 
1 Member for Brecon 
1 County Member . 
1 Member for Radnor 



1 County Member . . . 
1 Member for Montgomery 



1 County Member 
1 County Member 
1 Member for Denbigh 

1 County Member 
1 Member for Flint . 



1 County Member . . 
1 Member for Carnarvon 



1 County Member . . 
1 Member for Beaumaris 



By the Act of 1832. 
2 County Members 
1 Member for Cardiff, 

Cowbridge, and Llan- 

trisant 
1 Member for Swansea, 

Loughor, Neath, Aber- 

avon, and Kenfig. 

1 Member for Merthyr 
Tydvil. 

2 County Members 

1 Member for Monmouth 

2 County Members 

1 Member for Carmarthen 
and Llanelly 

1 County Member 

1 Member for Pembroke, 
Tenby, Wiston, Milford 

1 Member for Haverford- 
west, Narberth, Fish- 
guard 

1 County Member 

1 Member for Cardigan, 
Aberystwyth, Adpar, 
and Lampeter 

1 County Member 

1 Member for Brecon 

1 County Member 

1 Member for Radnor, 
Knighton, Rhayadr, 
Cefnllys, Knucklas, 
Presteign 

1 County Member 

1 Member for Montgomery, 
Llanidloes, Machynlleth, 
Newtown, Welshpool, 
Llanfyllin 

1 County Member 

2 County Members 

1 Member for Denbigh, 
Ruthin, Holt, Wrexham 

1 County Member 

1 Member for Flint, 
Rhuddlan, St Asaph, 
Mold, Holywell, 
Caerwys, Caergwrle, 
Overton 

1 County Member 

1 Member for Carnarvon, 
Conway, Bangor, Nevin, 
Pwllheli, Criccieth 

1 County Member 

1 Member for Beaumaris, 
Llangefni, Amlwch, 
and Holyhead 



no A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

and slate industries of North Wales became 
important. Cardiff, Swansea, and Newport 
became important ports ; and places that 
few had ever heard of before — like Ystrady- 
fodwg or Blaenau Ffestiniog — became the 
centres of important industries. 

But, in 1832, Wales was still mainly 
pastoral and agricultural ; and the Act, 
though it did much for the towns, left the 
representation of the counties in the hands of 
the same class. Still, it was the towns that 
showed disappointment, as was seen in the 
Chartism of the wool district of Llanidloes 
and of the coal district of Newport. 

The second Reform Act, of 1867, gave 
Merthyr Tydvil two representatives instead 
of one, otherwise it left the distribution of 
seats as it had been before. But the new 
extension of the franchise — to the borough 
householder, the borough £10 lodger, and 
especially the £ 1 2 tenant farmer — gave new 
classes political power. It was followed by 
a fierce struggle between the old landed 
gentry and their tenants, a struggle which 
was moderated to a certain extentb y the 
Ballot Act of 1870, and by the great 
migration of the country population to the 
slate and coal districts. 

The rapid rise of the importance of the 



THE REFORM ACTS in 

industrial districts is seen in the third 
Reform Act of 1885. The country districts 
represented by the small boroughs of the 
agricultural counties of Brecon, Cardigan, 
Pembroke, and Anglesey, were wholly or 
partly disfranchised. But the slate county of 
Carnarvonshire had an additional member ; 
and in the coal and iron country, Swansea 
and Carmarthenshire and Monmouthshire 
had one additional member each, and 
Glamorgan three. 

The third Reform Act enfranchised the 
agricultural labourer and the country artisan. 
In England many doubts were expressed 
about the intelligence or the colour of the 
politics of the new voter ; but, in Wales, 
most would admit that he was as intelligent 
as any voter enfranchised before him ; all 
knew there could be no doubt about his 
politics. 

The character of the representation of 
Wales has entirely changed. The squire 
gave place to the capitalist, and the capitalist 
to popular leaders. Wales, whose people 
blindly followed the gentry in the Great 
Civil War, is now the most democratic part 
of Britain. 



H2 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

XXIII 

EDUCATION 

The chief feature of the history of Wales 
during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries 
is the growth of a system of education. 

The most democratic, the most perfect, 
and the most efficient method is still that of 
the Sunday School. It was well established 
before the death of Charles of Bala, whose 
name is most closely connected with it, in 
1 8 14. It soon became, and it still remains, a 
school for the whole people, from children to 
patriarchs. Its language is that of its district. 
Its teachers are selected for efficiency — they 
are easily shifted to the classes which they can 
teach best ; and, if not successful, they go back 
willingly to the " teachers' class," where all 
are equal. The reputation of a good Sunday 
School teacher is still the highest degree that 
can be won in Wales. Plentiful text books 
of high merit, and an elaborate system of 
oral and written examinations, mark the last 
stage in its development. 

The Literary Meeting is a kind of secular 
Sunday School The rules of alliterative 



EDUCATION 113 

poetry and the study of Welsh literature 
and history, and sometimes of more general 
knowledge, take the place of the study of 
Jewish history, and psalm, and gospel. The 
Literary Meetings feed the Eisteddvod. 

The Eisteddvod passed through the same 
phases as the nation. It was an aspect of 
the court of the prince during the Middle 
Ages. In Tudor times it was used partly 
to please the people, but chiefly to regulate 
the bards by forcing them to qualify for 
a degree — a sure method of moderating 
their patriotism and of diminishing their 
number. In modern times the Eisteddvod 
is a great democratic meeting, and it is the 
most characteristic of all Welsh institutions. 
Its chairing of the bards is an ancient 
ceremony ; its gorsedd of bards is probably 
modern. But the people themselves still 
remain the judges of poetry ; they care very 
little whether a poet has won a chair or not, 
while a gorsedd degree probably does him 
more harm than good. 

Elementary education, in its modern sense, 
began with the circulating schools of Griffith 
Jones of Llanddowror in 1730. They were 
exceedingly successful because the instruction 
was given in Welsh, and they stopped after 
teaching 150,000 to read, not because there 

H 



ii4 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

was no demand for them, but on account 
of a dispute about their endowments in 
1 779, eighteen years after Griffith Jones' 
death. They were followed by voluntary 
schools, very often kept by illiterate teachers. 
Between 1846 and 1848 two organisations 
— the Welsh Education Committee and the 
Cambrian Society — were formed ; and they 
developed, respectively, the national schools 
and the British schools. After the Education 
Act of 1870, the schools became voluntary 
or Board ; education gradually became com- 
pulsory and free ; and in 1902 an attempt was 
made to give the whole system a unity and 
to connect it with the ordinary system of 
local government. 

The training of teachers became a matter of 
the highest importance. In 1846 a college 
for this purpose was established at Brecon, 
and then removed to Swansea. From 1848 
to 1862, colleges were established at Car- 
marthen, Carnarvon, and Bangor. 

The history of secondary education is 
longer. It was served, after the dissolution 
of the monasteries, by endowed schools — 
like that of the Friars at Bangor— and by 
proprietary schools. By the Education Act of 
1889, a complete system of secondary schools, 
under popular control, was established. Two 



EDUCATION 115 

of the endowed schools still remain — Brecon, 
founded by the religionists of the Reforma- 
tion, and Llandovery, the Welsh school 
founded by a patriot of modern times. 

It was principally for the ministry of 
religion that secondary schools and colleges 
were first established. Schools were founded 
in many districts, and important colleges 
at Lampeter (degree-granting), Carmarthen, 
Brecon, Bala, Trevecca, Pontypool, Llan- 
gollen, Haverfordwest. Many of these have 
a long history. 

Higher education had been the dream 
of many centuries. Owen Glendower had 
thought of establishing two new universities 
at the beginning of the period of the Revival 
of Letters ; among his supporters were many 
of the Welsh students who led in the great 
faction rights of mediaeval Oxford. Oliver 
Cromwell and Richard Baxter had thought 
of Welsh higher education. But nothing 
was done. In the eighteenth century, and 
in the nineteenth until 1870, the Test Act 
shut the doors of the old Universities to 
most Welshmen ; the new University of 
London did not teach, it only examined ; 
the Scotch Universities, to which Welsh 
students crowded, were very far. In 1872, 
chiefly through the exertions of Sir Hugh 



n6 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

Owen, the University College of Wales was 
opened at Aberystwyth, and maintained for 
ten years by support from the people. The 
Government helped, and two new colleges 
were added — the University College of 
South Wales at Cardiff in 1883, and the 
University College of North Wales at 
Bangor in 1884. In 1893 Queen Victoria 
gave a charter which formed the three 
colleges into the University of Wales. Lord 
Aberdare, its first Chancellor, lived to see 
it in thorough working order. On Lord 
Aberdare's death, the Prince of Wales was 
elected Chancellor in 1896; and when he 
ascended the throne in 1901, the present 
Prince of Wales became Chancellor. 

The tendency of the whole system of 
Welsh education is towards greater unity. 
There is a dual government of the secondary 
schools and of the colleges, the one by 
the Central Board and the other by the 
University Court — a historical accident 
which is now a blemish on the system. 
The Training Colleges are still outside the 
University, but they are gravitating rapidly 
towards it. The theological colleges are 
necessarily independent, but the University 
offers their students a course in arts, so 
that they can specialise on theology and its 



LOCAL GOVERNMENT 117 

kindred subjects. The ideal system is : an 
efficient and patriotic University regula- 
ting the whole work of the secondary and 
elementary schools, guided by the willing- 
ness of the County Councils, or of an 
education authority appointed by them, to 
provide means. 

The rise of the educational system is 
the most striking and the most interesting 
chapter in Welsh history. But the facts 
are so numerous and the development is 
so sudden that, in spite of one, it becomes 
a mere list of acts and dates. 



XXIV 

LOCAL GOVERNMENT 

The French Revolution was condemned by 
Britain, and the voices raised in its favour 
in Wales were few. The excesses of the 
Revolution, and the widespread fear of a 
Napoleonic invasion, caused a strong reaction 
against progress. The years immediately 
after 181 5 were years of great suffering, but 
the very suffering prepared the way for the 
progress of the future, because it made men 



n8 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

willing to leave their own districts and to 
move into the coal and slate districts, where 
wages were high enough to enable them 
to live. 

The first demand was for political enfran- 
chisement. In 1832, in 1867, and in 1884 
the franchise was extended, and every interest 
found a voice in Parliament. But, with the 
exception of the sharp struggle between the 
tenant and landlord after the Reform Act 
of 1867, the effects of enfranchisement on 
Wales have been very few. Two Acts alone 
have been passed as purely Welsh Acts — the 
Sunday Closing Act, and the Intermediate 
Education Act. In Parliament, the voice 
of Wales is weak even though unanimous ; 
it can be outvoted by the capital or by 
four English provincial towns. Until quite 
recently its semi - independence — due to 
geography and past history — was looked 
upon as a source of weakness to the Empire 
rather than of strength. Its love for the 
past appeals to the one political party, its 
desire for progress to the other, but its 
distinctive ideals and its separate language 
are looked upon, at the very least, as political 
misfortunes. Education and justice have 
suffered from official want of toleration ; the 
appointment of a County Court judge who 



LOCAL GOVERNMENT 119 

could not speak Welsh, within living memory, 
has been justified by Government on the 
ground that Englishmen resident in Wales 
object to being tried by a Welsh judge. 

Far more important to Wales than the 
Reform Acts are the Local Government 
Acts which followed them. When the 
Reform Act of 1884 added the agricultural 
labourer to the electors of representatives 
in Parliament, every interest had a voice. 
A further extension of the franchise would 
not affect the balance of parties, it was 
thought ; and a British Parliament has no 
time or desire to think of sentiment or 
theoretical perfection. The Parliament found 
it had too much to do, the multiplicity of 
interests made it impossible to pay effective 
attention to them. The result has been that 
half a century of extension of the franchise 
has been followed by half a century of ex- 
tension of local government. The County 
Council Act came in 1888, and the Local 
Government Act in 1894. 

Of all parts of Britain, Wales had least 
local government, and needed most. Its 
justices of the peace were alien in religion, 
race, and sympathy ; they were either country 
squires who had lost touch with the people, 
or English and Scotch capitalists who, with 



120 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

rare exceptions, took no trouble to under- 
stand the people they governed, or to learn 
their language. The vestry meeting had 
been active enough during the early part 
of the eighteenth century ; but religious 
difficulties made it impossible for a semi- 
ecclesiastical institution to represent a parish. 
The Tudor policy had separated the people 
from the greater land-owners; the iron masters 
and coal-owners had not yet become part 
of the people ; there was not a single institu- 
tion except the Eisteddvod where all classes 
met. 

In no part of the country was local 
government so warmly welcomed, and no 
part of the country was more ready for it. 
One thing the peasants had been allowed 
to do — they could build schools and colleges, 
churches and chapels. They had filled the 
country with these — their architecture, 
finance, government, are those of the peasant. 
The religious revivals had left organisers 
and institutions. Four or five religious 
bodies had a system of institutions — parish, 
district, county, central. All these were 
thoroughly democratic in character. When 
the 'Local Government Acts were passed, 
there was hardly a Welshman of full age 
and average ability who had not been a 



LOCAL GOVERNMENT 121 

delegate or in authority ; and those of strik- 
ing ability, if they could afford the time, 
continually sat in some little council or other 
and watched over the interests of some 
institution. 

It was from among these trained men that 
the councillors for the new county, district, 
and parish senates were elected. The 
work of the councils, especially that of the 
County Council, has been very difficult ; 
and when the time comes to write their 
history, the historian will have to set him- 
self to explain why the first councils were 
served by men who had extraordinary tact 
for government and great skill in financial 
matters. In the lower councils the village 
Hampden's eloquence is modified by the 
chilling responsibility for the rates, but the 
Parish Councils have already, in many places, 
made up for the negligence of generations of 
sleepy magistrates and officials. 

With a great difference, it is true, Wales 
under local government is Wales back again 
in the times of the princes. The parish is 
roughly the maenol, the district is the com- 
mote or the cantrev, the shire is the little 
kingdom — like Ceredigion or Morgannwg 
— which fought so sturdily against any 
attempt to subject it. 



122 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

The local councils were fortunate in the 
time of their appearance. They came at 
a period characterised by an intense desire 
for a better system of education, and at a 
time of rapidly growing prosperity. A heavy 
rate was possible, and the people were willing 
to bear it. The County Councils were able 
to build over seventy intermediate schools 
within a few years ; and that at a time 
when both elementary and higher education 
made heavy demands on what was still a 
comparatively poor county. The District 
Councils were able to lower the amount 
of outdoor relief considerably, and without 
causing any real hardship, for they had 
knowledge of their districts as well as the 
philanthropy that comes naturally to man 
when he grants other people's money. The 
Parish Councils have become the guardians 
of public paths ; they have begun to provide 
parish libraries, and the little parish senate 
educates its constituency and brings its 
wisdom to bear upon a number of practical 
questions, such as cottage gardens and fairs. 



THE WALES OF TO-DAY 123 

XXV 
THE WALES OF TO-DAY 

The most striking characteristic of the Wales 
of to-day is its unity — self-conscious and self- 
reliant. The presence of this unity is felt by 
all, though it may be explained in different 
ways. It cannot be explained by race ; for 
the population of the west midlands and the 
north of England, possibly of the whole of it, 
have been made up of the same elements. 
It cannot be explained by language — nearly 
one half of the Welsh people speak no Welsh. 
Some attribute it to the inexorable laws of 
geography and climate, others to the fatalism 
of history. Others frivolously put it down 
to modern football. But no one who knows 
Wales is ignorant of it. 

The modern unity of the Welsh people 
— seen occasionally in a function of the 
University, or at a national Eisteddvod, or 
in a conference of the County Councils — has 
become a fact in spite of many difficulties. 

One difficulty has been the absence of a 
capital. The office of the University and 
the National Museum are at Cardiff, in 



124 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

the extreme south ; the National Library 
is at Aberystwyth, on the western sea. 
The thriving industries, the densely popu- 
lated districts, and the frequent and active 
railways, are in the extreme south or in 
the extreme north ; and they are separated 
by five or six shires of pastures and 
sheep-runs, without large towns, and with 
comparatively few railways. In the three 
southern counties — Glamorgan, Monmouth, 
and Carmarthen — the population is between 
two and six people to 10 acres, and the 
industrial population is from twelve to three 
times the number of the agricultural. In the 
central counties — Brecon, Radnor, Cardigan, 
Merioneth, Montgomery — the population is 
below one for 10 acres ; the industrial and 
agricultural population are about equal, 
except in Radnor, where the agricultural is 
more than two to one. Though Merioneth 
has more sheep even than Brecon — and each 
of them has nearly 400,000 — its industrial 
population, owing to the slate districts, is 
double the agricultural. The population 
begins to thicken again as we get nearer 
the slate, limestone, and coal districts. In 
Denbigh it is two to the 10 acres, in 
Carnarvon it is three, and in Flint it 
rises to four or five. In these northern 



THE WALES OF TO-DAY 125 

counties the industrial population is double 
or treble the agricultural. The fertile 
western counties of Pembroke and Anglesey 
come between the industrial and grazing 
counties in density of population. 1 

Unity has arisen in spite of differences 
caused by the intensity of a religious revival, 
an intensity that periodically renews its 
strength. The Welsh are divided into sects, 
and the bitterness of sectarian differences 
occasionally invades politics and education. 
But there are two ever-present antidotes. 
One is the Welsh sense of humour, the 
nearest relative or the best friend of tolera- 
tion. The other is the hymn — creed has 
been turned into song, and that is at least 
half way to turning it into life ; the heresy 
hunter is disarmed by the poetry of the 
hymn, and its music has charms to soothe 
the sectarian breast. The co-operation of 
all in the work of local government has also 
enlarged sympathy. 

Unity has arisen in spite of the bilingual 

1 According to the census of 1901 the population per square 
mile of Glamorgan is 758, Monmouth 427, Carmarthen 141, 
Brecon 73, Radnor 49, Cardigan 88, Montgomery 68, 
Merioneth 74, Denbigh 197, Carnarvon 217, Flint 319, 
Pembroke 143, Anglesey 183. 

The rate of increase per cent, between 1891 and 1901 are — 
Wales 13.3 ; England 12.1 ; Scotland 11.1 ; Ireland - 5.2. 



126 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

difficulty. Rather more than one half of the 
people now habitually speak English. For 
three centuries an Act — a dead letter from 
the beginning — ordered all Government 
officials to speak English ; for many genera- 
tions, until recently, Welsh children were not 
taught Welsh in schools, and they could not 
be taught English. The bilingual difficulty 
is now at an end. The two languages are 
taught in the schools, and as living languages. 
It is clear, on the one hand, that every one 
should learn English, the language of the 
Empire and of commerce. It is also clear 
that, on account of its own beauty as well 
as that of the great literature it enshrines, 
Welsh should be taught in every school 
throughout Wales. 

Next to its unity, a characteristic of modern 
Wales is its democratic feeling. It is a 
country with a thoughtful and intelligent 
peasantry, and it is a country without a 
middle class. There is a very small upper 
class — the old Welsh land-owning families 
who once, before they turned their backs on 
Welsh literature, led the country. They 
have never been hated or despised, they are 
simply ignored. Their tendency now is to 
come into touch with the people, and they 
are always welcomed. But a middle class, 



THE WALES OF TO-DAY 127 

in the English sense, does not exist. The 
wealthier industrial class is bound by the 
closest ties of sympathy to the farmer and 
labourer. The farmer's holding is generally 
small — from 50 to 250 acres — and he always 
treats his servants and labourers as equals. 

The three great levelling causes — religion, 
industry, 1 and education — have been at work 
in Wales in recent years. Education helps 
and is helped by equality. In town and 
country alike all Welsh children attend the 
same schools — elementary and secondary ; 
and they proceed, those that do proceed, 
to the same University, and a university 
is essentially a levelling institution. The 
dialects, as well as the literary language, 
are recognised ; and no dialect has a stigma. 
In this respect Wales is more like Scotland 
than England. 

There is one other characteristic of modern 
Wales — a certain pride, not so much in what 
has been done, but in what is going to be 
done. Wales is small, though not much 
smaller than Palestine, or Holland, or Switzer- 
land, and every part of it knows the other. 

1 In 1801 the population of Cardiff was 1870, and coal was 
brought down from Merthyr on donkeys. In 1901 the three 
ports of Cardiff, Newport, and Swansea exported nearly as 
much coal as all the great English and Scotch ports put 
together. 



128 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 

There is a healthy rivalry between its towns 
and between its colleges ; each town can 
show that it has done something for Wales 
in the past — by means of its industries, or 
school, or press. In the strong feeling of 
unity there is ambition to surpass, and each 
part lives in the light of the action of the 
other parts. 

The day is a day of incessant activity — 
industrial, educational, literary, and political. 
What is true in the life of the individual is 
true in the life of a nation — a day of hard 
work is a happy day and a day of hope. 



AN OUTLINE OF WELSH 
POLITICAL HISTORY 

INFLUENCES UNDER WHICH THE HISTORY OF 
WALES WAS FORMED 

i. The nature of its rocks — Igneous, Cambrian, Silurian, Old 
Red Sandstone, Limestone, Coal — all belonging to the Primary 
Period. Its rocks 

(a) explain its scenery ; 

{&) explain its wealth, the richest part of Britain in minerals. 

2. The configuration of its surface. 

(a) It is isolated, its mountains being surrounded by the sea, 
or rising sharply from the plains. It is part of the 
range of mountains which runs along the whole of the 
west coast of Britain ; but the range is broken at the 
mouth of the Severn and at the mouth of the Dee. 

(5) It is divided, its valleys and roads radiating in all 
directions. So we have in its history 

A. Wars of Independence. 

B. Civil War. 

THE PEOPLE WHO CAME INTO WALES 

i. The Iberians — a general name for the short dark people who 
still form the greater part of the nations. They had stone weapons, 
and lived in tribes; they became subject to later invaders, but 
gradually became free. Their language is lost. 

2. The Celts — a tall fair-haired race, speaking an Aryan tongue. 
It was their migration that was stopped by the rise of Rome. Four 

I 129 



Gwynedd 


Bangor 


Powys 


St Asaph 


Dyved 


St David's 


Morgannwg 


Llandaff 



130 OUTLINE OF WELSH POLITICAL HISTORY 

groups of mountains, four nations (Celtic and Iberian), four 
mediaeval kingdoms, and four modern dioceses can be remembered 
thus : 

i. Snowdonia Decangi 

ii. Berwyn Ordovices 

iii. Plinlimmon Demetae 

iv. Black Mountains Silures 

3. The Romans. They made roads, built cities, worked mines. 

50-78. The Conquest. The Silures were defeated in 50, the 
Decangi in 58, the Ordovices in 78. 
80-200. The Settlement. Wales part of a Roman province 
including Chester and York. 
200-450. The struggle against the new wandering nations. The 

introduction of Christianity. 
450- The House of Cunedda represents Roman rule. 

4. The English. 

577. Battle of Deoiham. Wales separated from Cornwall. 
613. Battle of Chester. Wales separated from Cumbria. 



I. THE WALES OF THE PRINCES 

Isolated after the battles of Deorham and Chester, mediaeval 
Wales begins to make its own history. The House of Cunedda 
represents unity, the other princes represent independence. 
English, Danish, Norman attacks from without. 

1. 613-1063. The struggle between the Welsh princes and the 

English provincial kings. From the battle of 

Chester to the fall of Griffith ap Llywelyn. 
(a) Between Wales and Northumbria, 613-700; for the 

sovereignty of the north. Cadwallon, Cadwaladr 

v. Edwin, Oswald, Oswiu. 
{b) Between Wales and Mercia, 700-815 ; for the valley 

of the Severn. Rhodri Molwynog and his sons 

v. Ethelbald and Offa. 
(c) Between Wales and the Danes, 815-1000. Rhodri 

the Great and Howel the Good. 



OUTLINE OF WELSH POLITICAL HISTORY 131 

(d) Between Wales and Wessex, 1000- 1063 ; for 
political influence. Griffith ap Llywelyn v. 
Harold. 

2. 1063- 1 284. The struggle between the Welsh princes and the 

central English kings. 
(a) 1066-1137. The Norman Conquest. Norman barons v. 
Griffith ap Conan and Griffith ap Rees. 
1063. Bleddyn of Powys tries to unite Wales. 
1070. William the Conqueror at Chester. Advance of 
Norman barons from Chester, Shrewsbury, 
Hereford, Gloucester. 
1075. Death of Bleddyn ; succeeded by Trahaiarn. 
1077. Battle of Mynydd Cam. Restoration of House 
of Cunedda — Griffith ap Conan in the north ; 
Rees, followed by his son Griffith, in the south. 
1094. Norman castles dominate Powys, Gwent, Mor- 
gannwg, and Dyved. Gwynedd and Deheubarth 
threatened. 
1 137. Death of Griffith ap Conan and Griffith ap Rees, 
after setting bounds to the Norman Conquest. 
The struggle against Henry II, and his sons. 
The accession of Owen Gwynedd and of the Lord 

Rees of the Deheubarth. 
Henry II. interferes in the quarrel of Owen and 

Cadwaladr. 
The Cistercians at Strata Florida. 
Meeting of Owen Gwynedd, the Lord Rees, 
and Owen Cyveiliog at Corwen, to oppose 
Henry II. 
Death of Owen Gwynedd. 
Preaching of the Crusades in Wales. 
Death of Henry II. 
Death of the Lord Rees. 
The 7-eign of Llywelyn the Great. 
Securing the crown of Gwynedd. 
Alliance with King John. 
1208- 121 2. War with John. 

1212-1218. Alliance with barons of Magna Carta. 
1218-1226. Struggle with the Marshalls of Pembroke. 
1 226- 1 240. Unity of Wales : alliance with Marshalls. 



{*) 


1137-1197. 




1 137. 




1157. 




1 164. 




1 164. 




1 1 70. 




1 188. 




1 189. 




1197. 


(<) 


1 1 94- 1 240. 




1194-1201. 




1201-1208. 



132 OUTLINE OF WELSH POLITICAL HISTORY 

{d) 1 240- 1 284. The Wars of Independence. 

1241. David II. does homage to Henry III. 

1244. Death of Griffith, in trying to escape from the 

Tower of London. 

1245. Fierce fighting on the Conway. 

1254. Edward (afterwards Edward I.) Earl of Chester. 

1255. Llywelyn ap Griffith supreme in Gwynedd. 
1263. Alliance with the English barons. 

1267. Treaty of Montgomery; Llywelyn Prince of 

Wales. 
1274. Llywelyn refuses to do homage to Edward I. 

1277. Treaty of Rhuddlan ; Llywelyn keeps Gwynedd 

only. 

1278. Llywelyn marries Eleanor de Montfort. 

1282. Last war. Battle of Moel y Don. Llywelyn's 

death. 
1284. Statute of Wales. 

3. 1284-1535. The rule of sheriff and march lord. 

1287. Revolt of Ceredigion. 

1294. Revolts in Gwynedd, Dyved, Morgannwg. 

1315. Revolt of Llywelyn Bren. 

1349. The Black Death in Wales. 

1400. Rise of Owen Glendower. 

1402. Battles of the Vyrnwy and Bryn Glas. 

1404. Anti-Welsh legislation. 

1455. The Wars of the Roses. 

1461. Battle of Mortimer's Cross. 

1468. Siege of Harlech. 

1469. Battle of Edgecote. 

1478. Court of Wales at Ludlow. 
1485. Battle of Bosworth and accession of Henry VII. 
1535. Act of Union. All Wales governed by king 
through sheriffs. 



OUTLINE OF WELSH POLITICAL HISTORY 133 



II. THE WALES OF THE PEOPLE. 

In 1535 the march lordships were formed into shires, and a reign 
of law began. 

1535.1603. Period of loyalty to Tudor sovereigns — for equality 
before law and political rights. 
1536. The march lordships become shire ground. Wales 
given a representation in Parliament, and its 
own system of law courts — the Great Sessions 
of Wales. 
1539. Welsh passive resistance to the Reformation. 
1567. Sir Thomas Middleton opens silver mines of 

Cardiganshire. 
1588. Bishop Morgan's Welsh Bible. 
1593. Execution of John Penry. 

Results 1. Destruction of power of barons. 

2. Anglicising of gentry. 

3. A Welsh Bible. 

1603- 1689. Struggle between new and old ideas. 

161 8. Coal of South Wales attracts attention. 

1640. First Civil War. 

1644. Brereton and Myddleton win North Wales, 
Laugharne and Poyer win South Wales, for 
Parliament. 

1648. Second Civil War : siege of Pembroke. 

1650. Puritan "Act for the better Propagation of the 
Gospel in Wales. " 

1670. Vavasour Powell dies in prison. 

1689. Abolition of the Court of Wales. 
1 689- 1 894. Rise of the Welsh democracy. 

17 19. Copper works at Swansea. 

1730. Griffith Jones' circulating schools. 

1750. Iron furnaces at Merthyr Tydvil. 

1773. Death of Howel Harris. 

1 8 14. Death of Charles of Bala. 

1830. Abolition of Great Sessions of Wales. 

1832. First Reform Bill. 

1839. Chartism at Llanidloes and Newport. 

1867. Second Reform Bill. 



i 3 4 OUTLINE OF WELSH POLITICAL HISTORY 

1872, 1883, 1884. University Colleges. 
1884. Third Reform Bill. 

1888. County Council Act. 

1889. Secondary Education Act. 
1894. Local Government Act. 

University of Wales. 



THE HOUSE OF CUNEDDA 



TABLE I 

Cunedda Wledig {Dux Britannia). 
Maelgwn Gwynedd. 
Cadwaladr. 

I 

Idwal 

I 
Rhodri Molwynog 

I 
Conan Tindaethwy 

Esyllt = Mervin 

Rhodri the Great 
1 



I I I 

Anarawd Cadell Mervm. 

I I 

Idwal the Howel the 

Bald Good 



Iago Owen 

? I 



Conan.* Einion Meredith 

(See Table | I , mM „ 

II.) Cadell. Llywelyn ab SEiSYLLT = Angharad* = Cynvyn 

I I L_ 



Tewdwr.* | I 

(See Table III.) Griffith. Bleddyn. Rhiwallon. 

(See Table IV.) 



* The links between the House of Cunedda and the three ruling families 
after the Norman Conquest rest on the authority of tradition rather than on 
that of records. 

135 



i 3 6 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 



TABLE II.— GWYNEDD 

Griffith ap Conan 



Owen Gwynedd Cadwaladr. Gwenllian=G. ap Rees. 

I 



I I 

Iorwerth David I. 

I 
Llywelyn the Great 

I 

Griffith David II. 
I 



I III 

Eleanor de = Llywelyn the Last Owen David. Rhodri 
Montfort I the Red. | 

Thomas 

Gwenllian. 



Owen of Wales. 



TABLE III.— DYNEVOR 

Rees ap Tudor 
1 


1 
Griffith 

1 
l Lord Rees 

1 


1 

Nest. 


1 
Griffith. 


Rees the Hoarse. 



THE HOUSE OF POWYS 137 



TABLE IV.— POWYS 

Bleddyn ap Cynvyn 

r r ( 

Meredith Cadwgan Iorwertii. 

I _ I 

Owen of Powys. 



Madoc Owen Cyveiliog 

I I 

Griffith Maelor Griffith 

I I 

Madoc Gwenwynwyn. 

Griffith of Bromfield 



Madoc. Griffith Vychan 

I 
Madoc 

I 
Griffith 

I 
Griffith Vychan 

I 
Owen Glendower. 



138 A SHORT HISTORY OF WALES 



TABLE V.-MORTIMER 



Ll.YWELYN THE GREAT 
I 

Gladys the Dark = Ralph Mortimer of Wigmore 

I 
Roger Mortimer = Matilda de Braose 

I I 

Edmund Roger of Chirk 

Roger, first Earl of March Edward III. 

! i 

Edmund 

Lionel of John of Edmund of 
Roger, second Earl of March Clarence. Gaunt. York 

I 
Edmund, third Earl of March = Philipa 

1 

Roger Edmund = d. of Glendower. 



Edmund. Anne= Richard, Earl of Cambridge 

Richard, Duke of York 

(killed at Wakefield, 1460) 

I 



I I 

Edward IV. Richard III. 

(killed at Bosworth, 1485). 
Henry VII.- Elizabeth 

Henry VIII. 



THE HOUSE OF TUDOR 139 



TABLE VI.-TUDOR 



Edward III. 

I 
Tohn of Gaunt 

I 



I I 

Henry IV. John Beaufort I., 
Earl of Somerset 

Owen Tudor ■ Catherine of France =• Henry V. John Beaufort II., 

Duke of Somerset 

Henry VI. 



Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond = Margaret Beaufort 
Henry VII. 
Henry VIII. 



Edward VI. Mary. Elizabeth 



Printed at 

The Edinburgh Press 

9 and n Young Street 



PRINCE. S, 




Divisions claiming supremacy thus,— IPOWWSS. 
Districts claiming independence, or of great historical importance, 
thus— DYFED. 

Cantrevs of historical importance thus,— Arwystli. 



V\ 



in tvt k'ifcvN of 



CaWayf , SckaoW 








THE SHIRES. 

Shires of 1284 white. Shires of 1535 shaded. 



• Towns represented in 
Parliament from 1535. 

o Contributory boroughs 
added chiefly in 1832. 



t ? Ceased to be boroughs 
in 1884. 

© Representation doubled 
in 1867 and 1884. 



A line is put under the name of the county for each county 
member ; a circle round the central borough for a second member. 



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